relativism about knowledge
TRANSCRIPT
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
1/28
Relativism about Knowledge
Abstract
It is, in one sense, a truism that all knowledge is relative. At least, it is not wildly controver-
sial to hold that whether or not a subject knows a given proposition is relative to: some
or all of her beliefs (whether she believes the proposition in question); her environment
(the presence or absence of fake barns, say); her faith in her own discriminatory abilities;
what other people have said to her regarding this proposition. To hold any of these factors
to be relevant to determining, for example, whether a proposition concerning morality istrue might in some circles be enough for you to be branded a moral relativist; however,
taking them to be relevant to whether a proposition is known would not have the same
e ect. us to characterize relativism about knowledge we need to be more precise than
we might be for other kinds of relativism; we cannot label people as relativists simply
because they say that knowledge is relative to the beliefs and circumstances of the knower,
since everyonewould agree with that.
Suppose there are such things as truths about epistemic justi cation that statements
about epistemic justi cation express complete, truth-evaluable propositions rather than
incomplete or underspeci ed propositions, imperatives, or simply the approval or dis-
approval of the utterer. One important kind of truth about justi cation will concern the
epistemic status of particular beliefs for an enquirer, i.e. whether a speci c belief is justi ed
by a particular totality of evidence in particular circumstances; another will consist of
general truths about justi cation, for example truths about how much evidence of a certain
kind counts for or against certain kinds of beliefs. We could then state epistemic relativism
roughly as the proposal that the obtaining of these truths about justi cation depends
not only on the total informational state of the subject, but also on which particular epis-
temic standard or system is relevant in each case. For the purposes of this paper, I take itthat the principal interest of such a theory of justi cation lies in its capacity to motivate a
view widespread in the humanities, which I shall call epistemic pluralism: this is the view
that di erent societies or communities can have radically di erent knowledges, all of
which are deserving of equal respect, because none can be assessed independently of a
I have no intention to endorse any speci c internalist or externalist proposal about the nature of
justi cation; those with strong views about justi cation are invited to construe subsequent talk of justi cation
depending on evidence in whatever way best ts their preferred theory of justi cation.
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
2/28
given epistemic system. us the interesting forms of epistemic relativism will be those
which see justi cation as relative to the epistemic system current across a community; it is
not intended that the standards for justi cation might vary between di erent inhabitants
of the same community.
An epistemic relativist in the current sense is not primarily motivated by the problem of
making sense of variations in knowledge-ascription across high-stakes and low-stakes
scenarios within a community; thus the current debate is distinct from the competition
between contextualism (DeRose ), subject-sensitive invariantism (Hawthorne ;
Stanley ) and relativism (MacFarlane a) within mainstream epistemology, where
the standards to which knowledge and justi cation are relative may be said to vary even
between speakers in the same conversation. Further, epistemic pluralism in the current
sense is not intended to force the recognition of a plurality of equally valid concepts of knowledge, so that which concept is picked out by the word knows may vary from one
community to the next. Such a suggestion does not adequately capture the view under
consideration, for what is intended is that, even employing our concept of knowledge
alone, we should recognize radical divergence between communities with regard towhat
is known. A paradigmatic example is found in Boghossian ( a: - ): the Lakota, a
Native American tribe, should be recognized as knowing that their ancestors rst entered
the Americas from a subterranean spirit world, while we may equally truthfully present
ourselves as knowing that the Lakota entered the Americas across the Bering Strait. e
reason why many archeologists are persuaded by such an apparently paradoxical view is
that they believe that ( rst-world) science is just one of many ways of knowing the world
(Boghossian a: ). e epistemic pluralist view at issue, then, is in the rst place
a thesis about the possibility of radical diversity with regard to what is known, possibly
backed up with a pluralism about possible ways of arriving at knowledge. It does not
help us make sense of such a suggestion to imagine that the Lakota have a concept of
knowledge radically alien to our own; what is at issue is whether we can make sense of the
seemingly paradoxical knowledge-claims made on the Lakotas behalf by members of our
own community, who share our own concept of knowledge (whatever it is).
Recent discussion of epistemic relativism in the current sense has addressed the question
of how, and whether, the theory can be formulated so as to avoid what I shall call the
Acceptance Problem: this is the problem that accepting epistemic relativism would leave us
incapable of recognizing the normative force of our own epistemic judgements that we
cannot accept both epistemic relativism and our own epistemic beliefs. On one side of the
debate, Boghossian ( a) argues that, when properly formulated, epistemic relativism
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
3/28
has the consequence that all our pre-theoretic judgements about justi cation are strictly,
literally false; on theother side it is alleged that Boghossians argument relies ona mistaken
account of what the propositional content of statements about justi cation ought to be,
according to the epistemic relativist (Neta ; Kalderon ). Here I shall argue thatan Acceptance Problem remains, even a er the controversy about propositional content
has evaporated a view also defended by Wright ( ); however I shall suggest that
the problem can be avoided by adopting a less nave view of the connection between our
acceptance of an epistemic system and the obtaining of such a system. e problem for
the epistemic relativist is then to answer the question, what is it for an epistemic system
to obtain within a community, if it is not simply for the system to be accepted by that
community? Insofar as I suggest a way to avoid the Acceptance Problem, my presentation
is sympathetic to epistemic relativism. However, in the closing sections I return to the
connection between epistemic relativism and the wider aim of establishing epistemic
pluralism. Here I suggest that a proper understanding of the kind of epistemic relativism
needed to support epistemic pluralism reveals an incoherence in the latter doctrine. Even
if there is no decisive argument against epistemic relativism, there is a strong case against
epistemic pluralism.
Boghossians Challenge and its Critics
Boghossian ( a) poses a version of the Acceptance Problem for epistemic relativism:he claims that the epistemic relativist cannot go on accepting her pre-theoretic epistemic
system because she is now committed to treating the epistemic principles that constitute
this system as strictly, literally false. Boghossian recommends an error-theoretic approach
to ordinary assertions about justi cation: faced with a statement of a particular epistemic
judgement such as
(C) Copernicanism is justi ed by Galileos observations
we must
reform our talk so that we no longer speak simply about what is justi ed
by the evidence, but only about what is justi ed by the particular epistemic
system that we happen to accept.
Boghossian , p.Boghossian , p.
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
4/28
is recommended reformation is especially puritanical: we do not abandon our usual
discourse about justi cation because it is misleading (althoughtrue), but rather the thought
is that
particular epistemic judgements are uniformly false, and so must be replaced
by judgements about what is entailed by the epistemic systems that we happen
to accept.
us we can make sense of what epistemic relativism amounts to, according to Boghossian:
we might state it as the view that only explicitly relativisticepistemic judgements should be
endorsed, because only explicitly relativistic judgements arecapable of expressing truth. So
too, mutatis mutandis , for sentences: we should only utter explicitly relativistic sentences
about justi cation, because no others can express truth. A sentence will count as explicitly relativistic i it includes a clause of the form according to current epistemic system ES....
Sentences about justi cation that fail to include such a clause will be false, because they
will attribute absolute justi cation where justi cation is only ever relative to an epistemic
system.
e problem for the epistemic relativist now comes into focus: since accepting epistemic
relativism (in Boghossians formulation) requires us to accept that only explicitly rela-
tivistic judgements can be true, and since our pre-theoretic epistemic judgements are not
explicitly relativistic, accepting epistemic relativism commits us to counting all our pre-theoretic particular epistemic judgements as false. But particular epistemic judgements
are instances of general epistemic principles, and plausibly any general principle with
many false instances is itself false. us epistemic relativism, in Boghossians presentation,
commits us to counting all our epistemic principles as false, and consequently we cannot
but reject the epistemic system which is constituted by these principles. But then there
is a direct line from acceptance of epistemic relativism to the rejection of the epistemic
system that we do in fact endorse. Epistemic relativism was introduced towiden the range
of acceptable epistemic judgements by allowing for divergence across communities withregard to what counts as justi ed by a given totality of evidence. But now it seems that
accepting the theory leaves us incapable of endorsing even our own epistemic practices.
Critics of this argument have emphasized and Boghossian himself ( b) has been
quick to point out that other formulations of epistemic relativism are possible, which
do not incorporate an error-theory about ordinary epistemic discourse, and consequently
do not commit us to the falsity of our own epistemic system. We should notice two in
Boghossian a, p.
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
5/28
particular: one, which we might call Content-Relativism, suggests that ordinary sentences
and beliefs about justi cation have relativisticcontent ; the other, which might be described
as Truth-Condition Relativism , suggests that ordinary epistemic sentences and beliefs do
not have relativistic content, but instead have relativistic truth-conditions. Accordingto Content-Relativism, our pre-theoretic claim (C) that Copernicanism is justi ed by
Galileos observations is true, because the content of the proposition would be more
perspicuously expressed using the sentence
(C*) According to thecurrent epistemic systemES,Copernicanism is justi ed
by Galileos observations.
Although the original tokening of the proposition, using (C), suggested that justi cation
is a two-place relation between belief and evidence, the full statement of the propositionalcontent given by (C*) reveals justi cation to be a three-place relation between belief,
evidence, and the current epistemic system. Since (presumably) our current epistemic
system applauds Galileos reliance on observation rather than scripture to form beliefs
about the heavens, what we said (and what we believe) turns out to be true.
An alternative account is given by Truth-Condition Relativism, which nds a way to count
our pre-theoretic epistemic judgements as true without altering the propositional content
expressed. Here, the suggestion is that there is nothing misleading about our original
statement in fact, the content of the proposition Copernicanism is justi ed by Galileos
observations is, as it seems to be, one involving a two-place relation between beliefs and
evidence. However, the truth-condition for this proposition is relativized: we no longer
speak of the proposition being true or false simpliciter , but rather true for an epistemic
system. is has the consequence that two commentators on Galileos beliefs could if
they were subject to di erent epistemic systems exhibit blameless disagreement about
one and the same proposition even if their total evidential state was the same: the sentence
Copernicanism is justi ed by Galileos observations could express the same content for
both of us, while being true for my epistemic system, yet false for your epistemic system.
Boghossian ( b) considers and explicitly rejects both of these alternative formulations:
Content-Relativism is ruled unacceptable because it is implausible to suppose that users
of the reinterpreted sentences intend their remarks to be elliptical for some relational
sentences ( b: ), while Truth-Condition Relativism is rejected because it requires
us to say that people
ose who believe that blameless disagreement of this kind is a distinguishing feature of relativism will
deny that my Content-Relativism is properlydescribedas relativism. So be it: at this point I am not interested
in legislating over terminology.
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
6/28
didnt know what the truth-conditions of their own thoughts were, that when
they stated those truth-conditions simply by disquoting, they said something
false.
Neither of these arguments should convince us. First, it is implausible to contend that
the logical structure attributed to a propositional content must match the intentions and
intuitions of ordinary speakers. For one thing, such a requirement is too strong: for
example, it would prevent us from endorsing Russells theory of descriptions (because
most speakers do not intended to express an existentially quanti ed content when they
use a de nite description). Moreover, it may seem strange to credit ordinary speakers
with any intentions about the relativity of their judgements at all: while it may be true that
users of sentences about justi cation do not intend to express relativized propositions,
it may be equally true that users of such sentences have nothing that could count asan intention to express propositions that are not relativized. In most cases it may be
that the intentions of users of such sentences do not give us any guidance as to whether
statements about justi cation have relativistic content. is is especially so given that the
conceptual apparatusnecessary to forman intention toexpressa relativized orunrelativized
propositional content may be beyond the reach of the majority of those stating epistemic
judgements. Finally, if the purpose of allowing the intuitions and intentions of ordinary
speakers to guide our choice of logical structure was to eliminate the phenomenon of
semantic blindness, where language-users are disconcertingly ignorant of the content of their own utterances, the attempt does not succeed: some language users will continue to
exhibit semantic blindness even under the current proposal, namely those theorists who
are convinced that the sentences in question do express a relativized content.
e argument against Truth-Condition Relativism is even less persuasive. Boghossian
alleges that ascribing relativistic truth-conditions to a proposition p requires us to deny
the ordinary disquotational truth-condition,
(D) p is true i p,
in favour of a relativized truth-condition,
(D*) p is true i p relative to F .
Although it seems clear that the Truth-Condition Relativist should endorse (D*), it is
unlikely that she must also reject (D) as Boghossian supposes. When we learn from (D*)
Boghossian b, p.See DeRose for this last argument applied to debates between contextualism and invariantism.
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
7/28
that the truth-conditions of p are the same as those of p relative to F , this is a lesson
which applies to both occurences of p in the original disquotation (D). Since both sides
of the biconditional (D) have the same (relativistic) truth-conditions, (D) is true, and we
are not in a position to impute massive error to anyone who believes (D). Since Truth-Conditional Relativism does not suggest that our ordinary beliefs about truth-conditions
are mistaken, it need not be rejected on that count.
So the epistemic relativist has two viable alternatives to Boghossians error-theoretic
construal, each of which allows her to count ordinary pre-theoretic epistemic judgements
as true. Nevertheless, I shall suggest that a version of the Acceptance Problem threatens
even these alternatives which is to say that endorsing either the Truth-Conditional
or Content versions of epistemic relativism leaves us incapable of accepting our own
epistemic system. First, a few points about the prima facie connection between generalepistemic principles, epistemic systems, and speci c epistemic judgements. It is natural to
think of an epistemic system is as a collection of general epistemic principles principles
about what kinds of evidence justify what kinds of belief. Further, it is natural to explain
a believers propensity to form certain kinds of belief on the basis of certain kinds of
evidence by appealing to thebelievers acceptance of a general principle licensing her belief-
formation. For example, we might explain a creationists disregard for evolutionary theory
by adverting to his acceptance of an epistemic principle according to which scriptural
evidence trumps observation of the fossil record. us it is also natural, when relativizing
judgements about justi cation, to treat them as relative to the epistemic system that we
ourselves accept . Finally, since epistemic systems are collections of general epistemic
principles, it is natural to suppose that a particular judgement about justi cation is true
relative to (or according to) a system in the sense that that speci c judgement isentailed
by the epistemic principles contained within the system plus the epistemic circumstances
that obtain. If we think of epistemic principles as encoding a system for deciding whether
a given belief is justi ed, then a speci c judgement about the epistemic status of a given
belief will be true according to the principles because it is aconsequenceof the principles
that, in the circumstances, the given belief is justi ed.
If this is a plausible reconstruction of the epistemic relativists views, then what should she
say about the truth-conditions of the general principles which make up her own epistemic
system? As I have argued, there are two viable ways to relativize truths about justi cation;
these can be applied to general epistemic principles as follows:
See Boghossian a, p. - for a defence of these natural assumptions about the connection between
epistemic systems, principles, and judgements.
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
8/28
Content-Relativism : e statement of epistemic principle p expresses the
content p relative to the epistemic system ES which I accept.
Truth-Condition Relativism : e statement of epistemic principle p ex-
presses the content p, but this content is not true or falsesimpliciter ; insteadit is true relative to the epistemic system ES which I accept.
Choice between these options will largely be determined by our approach to disagreement:
on Content-Relativismadherents to di erent epistemic systems who apparently disagree in
their epistemic principles or judgements will not genuinely disagree, for the relevant epis-
temic system is written into the content of any proposition they endorse: when a member
of community A accepts principle p they are really accepting p relative to community As
epistemic system , while a member of community B who rejects principle p really rejects
p relative to community Bs epistemic system . Conversely, Truth-Condition Relativism
preserves disagreement: when we dispute principle p we dispute the same propositional
content regardless of which epistemic system is current. Some would argue that preserving
genuine disagreement is a desideratum of any acceptable relativization (MacFarlane );
however for many the attraction of relativism about a certain discourse consists in its
promise to make good on the feeling that debate within the discourse is somehow pointless
or insubstantial, by revealing that there is no genuine disagreement. For that reason I
shall not attempt to arbitrate between Content-Relativist and Truth-Condition Relativist
approaches to epistemic relativism.
A second reason for withdrawing from the debate between these two formulations is that
discussion can proceed without prejudicing decision between the two: it makes sense
to ask how relativization to an epistemic system a ects the conditions under which a
statement of epistemic principle counts as true, whether we believe that the relativity is
part of the propositional content of the principle, or should be captured by adding an extra
parameter to the evaluation of a non-relativistic content. In both cases the suggestion is
that a statement of principle p will be true i p is true relative to an accepted epistemic
system. But what is it for an epistemic principle to be true relative to an epistemic system?On the natural view outlined above, any epistemic principle contained within a system
will be licensed by true relative to or true according to that system simply in virtue
of being part of that system, by trivial self-entailment. If p is part of epistemic system ES
then system ES trivially entailsp and consequently p is true according to ES. But on the
current account, to be part of an individuals epistemic system is simply to be a general
epistemic principle accepted by that individual; if our epistemic principles are true because
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
9/28
part of our epistemic system, and they are part of our system because accepted by us, then
our epistemic principles are true simply in virtue of our acceptance of them.
at is enough to make trouble for the epistemic relativist who has reasoned this far.
She is unconcerned by Boghossians original objection, that all her pre-theoretic epis-
temic judgements turned out to be false, because there are two ways of construing those
judgements so as to count them as true . However, when we apply those suggestions
Content-Relativism and Truth-Condition Relativism to the epistemic principles to
which the assessor appeals to ground her particular epistemic judgements, it turns out
that the truth of those principles is determined only by her decision to accept them. at
is to say, my epistemic system gets to be true (for me) simply because I accept it. But to
understand this is immediately to realize that, had I not accepted the system, the principles
it contains would exert no authority over me. is suggests that the principles in questionare in some sense optional and it ishard to see how a principle or rulecan exert authority
over us if our acceptance is optional in that sense.
Crispin Wright, with a characteristically nice turn of phrase, neatly pinpoints that the issue
of rationally unconstrained acceptance ( : ) of epistemic principles is the central
problem for a relativist account of justi cation: if our acceptance of a principle is up to
us, we can no longer credit that principle with the kind of normative authority consistent
with epistemic judgement. However, Wright supposes that this kind of free acceptance
of principle is an inevitable corollary of any view according to which epistemic systemsmight di er between communities: such a view
requires that there are general propositions about epistemic ... justi cation,
whose basic place in ones epistemic ... system goes with their acceptance
being e ectively rationally unconstrained.
As I shall argue later, we should not be too hasty to assume that there areno constraints on
what epistemic system obtains, above and beyond our free choice to accept that system: it
cannot be assumed that an Acceptance Problem a icts every epistemic relativism worthy of that name, simply because it a icts epistemic relativism as currently formulated.
Can this version of the Acceptance Problem be avoided by understanding acceptance as a
community-wide phenomenon rather than a matter of individual choice? is suggestion
is made, for independent reasons, by Kalderon:
[In Boghossians discussion] Epistemic judgements are relativized to epis-
Wright , p.
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
10/28
temic systems that an individual accepts . In the context of social construc-
tivism, wouldnt the more relevant formulation be in terms of epistemic
systems that a community agrees upon?
It is clear that treating acceptance of an epistemic system as a community-wide phe-
nomenon is an improvement, for the current suggestion is that epistemic standards vary
between communities rather than within them; we need to foreclose on the possibility that
standards may vary between individuals in one and the same community. (Indeed, one
plausible answer to the vexed question of what constitutes a community for the purposes
of epistemic relativism is that shared membership of a community is determined by
shared epistemic system.) Nevertheless, this suggestion does not enable us to avoid the
Acceptance Problem, as is clear when we see that even community-wide acceptance is
determined by the fact that individuals within that community accept the system for them-
selves. Perhaps not everyones judgement counts as much as anyone elses (Kalderon
: ). Still it will be the case that if we the community had chosen di erently,
a di erent epistemic system would have obtained. Even if I (as a single member of the
community) do not have absolute authority over the system that gets accepted, my opinion
counts for something; moreover, we the community have to take collective responsibility
for the system we have: there is nothing else to blame other than our free choice. Compare
an idealized democracy: no-one has absolute authority to pick a government, yet which
government is elected depends only on the unconstrained choice of the people. Treatingacceptance of an epistemic system as community-wide agreement still leaves us with the
problem that the choice of system is up to us or optional, and again it is hard to see how
the principles contained within that system can exert authority over us if our (communal)
acceptance of them is optional.
Rejecting Epistemic Systems; ree Kinds of Relativity
Two other putative solutions to the Acceptance Problem present themselves; in this section
I outline themand argue that they fail. One is to reject the very idea ofan epistemic system
to deny that there is such a thing as a set of epistemic principles which all the members
of a community share. Notice that we need to do more than simply claim that the shared
epistemic system is, like the frictionless plane, an idealization not found in nature, but
useful for the purposes of theory: as long as the notion of a shared epistemic system plays a
central role in a relativist theory of justi cation of the kind under discussion, the problem
Kalderon , p.
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
11/28
will remain that anyone who accepts that theory of justi cation thereby undercuts his
allegiance to whatever epistemic principles he has. Rather, to avoid the current problem it
is necessary to remove the notion of a shared epistemic system from our theory altogether.
If there are no such things as epistemic systems, then it no longer makes sense to ask whether, and how, we should go on accepting our own epistemic system in the face of the
epistemic relativists revelation that acceptance of that system is up to us.
It is indeed plausible that there are no such things as epistemic systems. But even if
this is true, it is of little help to the epistemic relativist. To motivate relativism about
justi cation, we need to be able to make sense of the idea that the background against
which particular epistemic judgements are made might vary between communities; and
as I have already suggested to generate an epistemic relativism consistent with the
epistemic pluralist agenda at issue, we need to make sense of the idea that the backgroundagainst which particular epistemic judgements are made remains constant across members
of the same community. How else is this to be done, if not by introducing the notion of
a set of epistemic principles which are shared across a community and which constitute
an epistemic system? To talk of a community sharing an epistemic background which it
fails to share with another community is to represent a community as sharing a way of
thinking about justi cation which might not be shared by others; and there does not seem
to be a way of capturing how a way of thinking could be the same within a group and
di erent from that of other groups, save by introducing the notion of a set of accepted
general principles about justi cation in short, an epistemic system.
So rejecting thenotion of an epistemic systemsolves theAcceptance Problem, at thecost of
making the current epistemic relativist proposal unintelligible. An alternative suggestion
takes a more nuanced approach to the question of whose epistemic system counts when
making judgements about justi cation. Suppose we have a speci c epistemic judgement
concerning an individual, for example,
(GO) Galileos astronomical beliefs were justi ed by his observations.
e epistemic relativist suggests that the truth or falsity of a proposition such as (GO)
depends in part on the epistemic system at issue. But whose epistemic system? A natural
suggestion, in line with much current debate on analytic relativism, is that what counts
in assessment of the truth or falsity of (GO) is the epistemic system of theassessor . (GO) is
truewhen assessed by us, because we share Galileos scienti c epistemic system, although
See MacFarlane : for a principled attack on Boghossians notion of an epistemic system.See especially MacFarlane b
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
12/28
it is falsewhen assessed by someone like Cardinal Bellarmine whose thought operates
within an epistemic system according to which scripture trumps astronomical observation
when it comes to determining cosmology. Call this view the assessor-sensitivity of justi -
cation. It is likely that it is such a view that is at issue in Boghossian ( a); at least thatis a plausible reconstruction based on his insistence that any statement of an epistemic
judgement should by reformulated to include explicit reference to the person making that
judgement, by means of the indexical I.
However, a view that takes justi cation to be assessor-sensitive is not the only way to
construe epistemic relativism; nor is it obviously what the defenders of epistemic relativism
have in mind; nally (as I shall argue in the closing sections of this paper) it is not the right
way for the epistemic pluralist or social constructivist to deal with the sort of relativity
needed if knowledge is to turn out to be socially located. We should take note of twoalternatives in particular. One, which we might call contextualism about justi cation , is
that the epistemic system relevant to assessing any claim about justi cation is the epistemic
system selected by the context of use: the system current for the person who tokens that
claim, e.g. by uttering a sentence expressing it. is position di ers somewhat from the
contextualism about knowledge familiar from the literature: contextualism is more usually
invoked to make sense of divergent knowledge-ascriptions between di erent members of
the same community. Nevertheless, the central idea is easily grasped: whereas assessor-
sensitive accounts see therelevant epistemic systemto be that to which theassessor belongs,
contextualist accounts will see the relevant epistemic system to be the one current in the
community of the tokener of the claim. While these accounts will deliver the same verdict
in the case where tokener and assessor are the same (e.g. where I discuss the truth or
falsity of my own epistemic statements and beliefs), they will come apart in cases where we
assess a statement about Galileos epistemic status which is tokened by some third party:
here the contextualist will assess according to the third partys epistemic system, while the
defender of assessor-sensitivity will assess according to her own epistemic system.
It does not seem that endorsing contextualism about justi cation will get us very far with
the current problem. Since contextualist and assessor-sensitive accounts will agree that
our own statements of epistemic principle are to be assessed in light of our own epistemic
system, we still have the worrying result that the principles that comprise our epistemic
system get to be true simply by being part of the epistemic system that we accept. e
Acceptance Problem is not avoided by adopting contextualism, because contextualism
retains the problematic insistence that our own epistemic system is true because we accept
it.
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
13/28
Moreover, it is possible to make a strong case that contextualism about justi cation does
not capture what the epistemic pluralist has in mind. Consider the situation when three
epistemic systems are in play: Galileos, our own, and that of some third community
call it Community C. When a member of Community C expresses an epistemic judgementabout Galileo, for example by tokening (GO), and saying that Galileos astronomical
beliefs were justi ed by his observations, the contextualist should say that the truth or
falsity of that utterance depends on whether Galileos beliefs were justi ed according
to the standards current in community C . But plausibly, this is not what the epistemic
pluralist intends: when evaluating claims about justi cation of this kind, it makes sense to
evaluate according to our own epistemic system, and it makes sense to evaluate according
to Galileos epistemic system; but why should a claim about Galileo be evaluated (by us)
according to an epistemic system which neither we nor Galileo share? e situation here
is markedly di erent from that encountered in standard debates about contextualism:
whereas it is plausible that the truth of an epistemic claim is covariant with the situation of
the speaker when such variation amounts merely to the di erence between high stakes
and low stakes scenarios within a community, it is much less appealing to say that
epistemic claims are to be evaluated according to the situation of their tokener where this
is a matter of selecting one out of a range of possibly salient complete epistemic systems.
A di erent, third view sees justi cation to depend, not on the epistemic system of the
assessor , but rather on that of the person forming the belief whose justi cation is under
debate. According to this way of thinking which I shalldescribe as thesubject-sensitivity
of justi cation what counts when we assess Galileos beliefs qua justi cation is not
our epistemic system but that of Galileo himself, because Galileo is the owner of the
belief whose justi cation is at stake. Such a view of justi cation is o en assumed among
defenders of epistemic relativism. I o er two illustrative examples.
... a kind of relativism about justi cation, saying that whether someone
is justi ed in believing p in light of evidence E depends crucially on their
background beliefs and credences.
the reason that if it visually seems to Galileo that there are mountains on
the moon, then Galileo is prima facie justi ed in believing that there are
mountains on themoon is that, in Galileos community of inquiry , Observation
is an agreed-upon epistemic principle.
In each case, the suggestion is that epistemic relativism is best played out as a view that
MacFarlane , p. . My italics.Kalderon , p. . My italics.
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
14/28
connects thejusti cation ofanenquirersbeliefswith thebackgroundepistemic system that
the enquirer himself accepts; there is no prospect of someone from a di erent community
overriding the enquirers claim to justi cation by imposing an alien epistemic system on
the believer. us the suggestion is parallel to subject-sensitive invariantism in standardhigh-stakes/low-stakes cases in epistemology; both theories share the view that what
counts is the situation of the enquirer , not that of whoever happens to be tokening or
assessing a proposition about the epistemic status of that enquirer.
One problem for this subject-sensitive version of epistemic relativism is that it does, a er
all, deliver absolute truths about justi cation: there is no prospect of securing blameless
disagreement about Galileos epistemic status, because there is only one correct answer to
the question was Galileos belief justi ed by his observations? Once we have factored
in the epistemic system within which Galileo was working, we nd that Galileos belief either was or was not justi ed by the evidenceaccording to that system, and as it happens,
this epistemic system is the only relevant one so there is only one right answer to the
question. A second problem for subject-sensitive epistemic relativism is that it might not
prompt any revision of classical epistemology a er all. Suppose that we adopt the na ve
account according to which an epistemic system is a set of principles accepted or believed
by the enquirer. en any di erence in epistemic system between two enquirers will entail
a di erence in the background of beliefs or accepted propositions against which they
must assess their evidence. And it is not news, from the point of view of conventional
epistemology, that di erences in background beliefs can lead to di erences in which beliefs
are justi ed by what evidence: Marcias justi cation in believing that it is pm when she
sees the clock can be a ected by the presence or absence of the belief that the clock is
broken, and more generally on the constitution of her total belief-set.
Even if these consequences are relatively easy for the subject-sensitive epistemic relativist
to live with, there is a much more serious problem for the position, namely that it still does
not completely avoid the Acceptance Problem. Our judgements about the epistemic status
of other peoples beliefs plausibly do not face an Acceptance Problem, for in assessing
the beliefs of someone from a di erent community we assess according to the epistemic
system current within that community , and since we can use that system for the purposes
of our assessment without having to accept the system for ourselves, there is no problem
about how we might accept that system, even given its dubious status as optional for the
members of that community. However, two issues remain: rst, how can we make sense of
forming a normative epistemic judgement about someone within a di erent community,
See Hawthorne ( ) and Stanley ( )
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
15/28
using an epistemic system that we do not share? To class a belief as unjusti ed, say, is to
judge that the subject ought not to have formed it on the basis of the evidence at hand; but
why should an epistemic system which we do not share have any consequences for our
judgements about which beliefs someone ought or ought not to have formed? Second, andworse, the Acceptance Problem remains for judgements about our own evidence-based
beliefs, and those of other members of the community. If I judge that I was justi ed by
my evidence in believing that p, I judge myself using the epistemic system that I accept.
But how can I go on accepting that system once I absorb the epistemic relativist revelation
that the authority of this system consists only in the fact that my community accepts it?
Although I do not use my own epistemic system in order to make judgements about the
epistemic status of beliefs formed by member of other communities, I still need to accept
my epistemic system, otherwise there is no yardstick by which the epistemic status of my
own beliefs can be measured. Replacing assessment-sensitive epistemic relativism with its
subject-sensitive cousin does not enable us to avoid the Acceptance Problem.
A Repair to Epistemic Relativism
Nevertheless, epistemic relativism can be repaired to the point where it is at least coherent,
if not ultimately plausible. What is needed is to reject the idea that an epistemic system
derives its authority over a community simply from the fact that the community accepts
that system; the problem that remains is how the choice between epistemic systems isdetermined if not by the acclamation of the populace. Such a response to the current
problem is suggested by the wide gulf between the claim that epistemic standards are local
to communities, and contingent on the circumstances within those communities, on the
one hand, and the idea that epistemic standards apply within a society because accepted
by that society, on the other. e former idea is a much weaker thesis than the latter; yet
both are run together by the opponents of epistemic relativism. I shall suggest that a thesis
of the former kind is defensible where the latter is not.
Consider this relativistic picture: there are many di erent communities, and for each of them there is a distinct epistemic system. Depending on which avour of epistemic rela-
tivism you prefer, these systems will have normative authority either (i) over the epistemic
status of beliefs formed by members of the community (subject-sensitive epistemic rela-
tivism) or (ii) over the truth-values of statements about justi cation assessed by members
of the community (assessor-sensitive epistemic relativism) or (iii) over the truth-value
of statements about justi cation tokened by members of the community (contextualist
epistemic relativism). Crucially, however, the fact that an epistemic system obtains within
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
16/28
a given community does not depend on facts about whether or not the community ac-
cepts that system. is is of course not to say that there will be no members of the
community who accept the system: merely to say that the communitys acceptance of
the system is the result of the systems obtaining for other reasons. People will acceptepistemic principles because they ascertain that these principles obtain, rather than the
principles obtaining simply because people decide that they should. No Acceptance Prob-
lem threatens, because the normative force of the epistemic system that obtains within the
community does not depend on the communitys acceptance of the system.
is position is clearly a form of epistemic relativism, for it relativizes truth about justi ca-
tion to an epistemic system such that, had the relevant epistemic system been a di erent
one, the truth about justi cation would have been di erent. However, it lacks the extrane-
ous commitment to the view that the obtaining of an epistemic system depends only onthe communitys acceptance of that system, and thereby avoids the most serious problem
for formulations of epistemic relativism current in the literature. Yet a problem remains:
what, if not acceptance, determines that my system obtains in my community, and your
system obtains in your community? is is not a fatal objection, for answers are possible.
One would take a pragmatist form: the choice of epistemic system is determined by what
works from the point of view of e ective belief formation; since what works will di er
between societies, so will the epistemic system that obtains. Another answer is familiar
from mainstream debates about contextualism, and is also suggested by some remarks of
Neta ( : ): an epistemic system will be more stringent where it is more important
to arrive at the correct answer. A community where resources are scarce and danger is
rife will be one where the epistemic standards are higher and the epistemic system more
exacting.
It is, then, possible to make sense of epistemic relativism. However, we can say this
much in opposition: any proponent of such a view about justi cation owes us a decision
between subject-sensitive, assessor-sensitive and contextualist forms of the proposal;
even more importantly, she must be willing to explain what it is for an epistemic system to
obtain within a community, now that it is clear that this cannot simply be a matter of the
communitys accepting that system. Any determinate answer to the latter question will
involve endorsing a theory (e.g. pragmatism about justi cation) that brings problems of its
own; however, until an answer is given epistemic relativism remains merely a promissory
note rather than a complete proposal about how we should understand the possibility of
divergent truths about justi cation.
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
17/28
Epistemic Relativism and Epistemic Pluralism
Mydiscussion so far has suggested that epistemic relativism, narrowly conceivedas a thesis
about the truth-conditionsor content of propositions about justi cation, is notanobviously self-defeating position. Where there is a cogent argument against theposition, it will be one
that poses an explanatory challenge to the epistemic relativist: what determines that any
particular epistemic system has normative authority over our epistemic judgements, if not
simply the fact that we happen to accept that system? Nevertheless, I think the preceding
clari cation of options for the epistemic relativist provides material for a sound argument
againstepistemic pluralism, theviewthat di erent communitiescanhave radicallydi erent
knowledges all of which are deserving of equal respect. Some form of epistemic pluralism
is necessary, if not su cient, for holding that knowledge is socially located or socially
constructed in any interesting or controversial sense: how can knowledge depend on
the community of the knower if there is no substantial di erence from one community
to the next with regard to what is known? My contention will be that the epistemic
pluralist must be willing to say both that justi cation is subject-sensitive that truths
about justi cation are relative to the subject whom the proposition is about while also
saying that truth in general is assessor-sensitive, i.e. that all propositional truth is relative to
the person who is assessing the proposition for truth or falsity. Since (I claim) propositions
about justi cation cannot be both subject-sensitive and at the same time assessor-sensitive,
epistemic pluralism is incoherent.My argument depends on the premise that justi cation and truth are necessary for knowl-
edge (even if they are not su cientfor it); I shallmake noattempt todefendthatassumption,
and consequently my argument will have no relevance for pluralists who deny that knowl-
edge requires truth, or are willing to use knowledge as a term for any rationally-held
belief. I shall also simplify my presentation in two relatively inconsequential ways. First, I
shall talk of communities as the knowing subjects, although communities only know
things in a derivative sense: our community knows about special relativity in the sense
that scientists within our community know about special relativity. Second, when talkingabout justi cation I shall omit explicit reference to evidence: for a is justi ed in believing
p please understand a is justi edby her evidencein believing p. I hope nothing important
hinges on these shortcuts.
First, why must justi cation be subject-sensitive? I have already o ered illustrative quotes
to suggest that the subject-sensitivity of justi cation is what defenders of epistemic rela-
tivism have in mind; further, there is good reason to suppose that such a view is required
if epistemic pluralism is to get o the ground. Notice that if we are to accept that
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
18/28
(AK) Community A knows proposition p
we must also accept
(AJ) Community A is justi ed in believing proposition p.
In previous discussion, I suggested three ways of determining the epistemic system to
which (AJ) is relative. One is assessor-sensitivity, which is to say that the truth of (AJ)
depends on the epistemic system current for the person deliberating over whether to
accept or reject it. Another is context-sensitivity, which I glossed as the view that the
truth of (AJ) depends on the epistemic system current for the person uttering or otherwise
tokening (AJ). It is clear that neither of these two options will not do here. If (AJ) is
assessor-sensitive, then we should have to accept or reject it on the basis of our epistemic
system. Since, by hypothesis, community A is di erent from our own, and may have a
radically di erent epistemic system, treating (AJ) as assessor-sensitive does not guarantee
that we will accept (AJ); indeed in many cases where the epistemic pluralist may want
to ascribe knowledge, the requirement of assessing claims to justi cation according to
ones own epistemic system will prevent us from counting a community as having their
own special knowledge because we shall not be able to assess their belief as justi ed: the
belief in question is not justi ed with regard to our epistemic system, and that is the one
that the assessor-sensitivity of justi cation would require us to employ in assessing such a
claim. Context-sensitivity should be rejected for similar reasons: in cases where we areboth tokeners and assessors of (AJ), the contextualist will select our own epistemic system
as the relevant one, in which case there is no way to recognize a communitys beliefs as
justi ed although they are not licensed by our own epistemic system.
Instead, then, if we want to take seriously the claim that di erent communities have their
own distinctive knowledges, it will be necessary to treat claims such as (AJ) as relative to
theepistemic systemcurrent in thebelievers own community. at is to say, weaccept (AJ)
because we realize that belief inp is justi ed according to the epistemic system current in
community A, and accept that what counts from the point of view of assessing justi cationis not the epistemic system of the assessor , but rather that of the subject who forms the
belief that is to be assessed as justi ed or unjusti ed.
e second part of my argument is the claim that the epistemic pluralist must endorse a
general claim about the assessor-sensitivity of propositional truth. To establish this it is
necessary to look more closely at the scope and aims of epistemic pluralism. Epistemic
pluralism may be seen as incorporating two commitments: one is that di erent commu-
nities may know di erent sets of propositions; another is that there is no sense in which
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
19/28
any of these sets of known propositions is better than any other. Yet the conjunction
of these claims may be true as a matter of empirical fact, without forcing the revision of
classical epistemology: it is a truism that di erent communities know di erent things, just
as we know things which our ancestors did not, and vice versa(for example, I do not know what shape a mammoth footprint is). Moreover, it is easy to imagine circumstances in
which two communities know di erent propositions, yet neither knowledge-set is better
than the other. We merely have to imagine a situation in which, say, one community
knows a lot about arable farming, and the other knows a lot about animal husbandry. So
the conjunction of Variance and Equal Validity is not enough to produce a distinctive
epistemic pluralist view.
Instead, I suggest that epistemic pluralism should be understood in terms of thehypothesis
of radical di erences between communities with regard to what is known. One way of making room for the possibility of radical di erences between di erent knowledges is
via the subject-sensitive epistemic relativism just outlined, for then propositionp may be
known in one community because justi ed by the standards current in that community,
yet fail to be known in another community because not justi ed by the standards current
there even though both communities have the same total evidence. Yet this by itself
is not enough to deliver a truly radical di erence between communities knowledges,
nor is it obviously what epistemic pluralists have in mind. First, notice that (so long as
we retain the normal picture of knowledge as factive) what can be known will still be
limited by what is true; the only divergence in knowledges between communities will
be where some truths are not known in a community because that community is not in a
position to form beliefs about those truths which live up to the communitys standards
for justi cation. e only sense in which knowledges can di er between communities
is that di erent communities will know di erent subsets of truths, depending on their
circumstances; but this does not do much to distinguish epistemic pluralism from classical
theories of knowledge, since it is uncontroversial that di erent communities will know
di erent amounts of the truths that there are.
A second reason for dissatisfaction with the current account of epistemic pluralism is that
has no room for the kind of examples that epistemic pluralists endorse. To return to our
paradigmatic example from Boghossian, the epistemic pluralist will say that the Lakota
know that their ancestors came from inside the Earth, while we know that the Lakotas
ancestors came from Asia across theBering Strait ( a: - ). Here it is clear that thesense
in which knowledge sets may be radically di erent across communities is that di erent
See Boghossian a, p. for these commitmentsas de ningfeatures of constructivism in thehumanities.
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
20/28
knowledge-sets may be incompatible with each other that my community might know
p while at the same time your community knows not-p or some other proposition q that
is incompatible with p. What is intended by epistemic pluralists in the humanities is not
merely knowledge-sets which di er between communities, but rather the possibility of con icting propositions being known within the knowledge-sets of di erent communities.
us it seems that a de ning feature of epistemic pluralism should be the acceptance of
incompatible knowledge-sets.
e need for theepistemic pluralist to make room for incompatible knowledge-sets enables
us to see why epistemic pluralism is committed to the assessor-sensitivity of truth. Notice
that if we want to accept
(AK) Community A knows proposition p
we must also accept
(AT) Proposition p is true.
And if we mean to endorse the thesis of knowledges which are radically di erent in the
sense that they are incompatible with each other, we also should be prepared to accept the
pair
(BK) Community B knows proposition not-p
and
(BT) Proposition not-p is true.
It is tempting to say that there is no sense in which we could ever accept the conjunction
of (AT) and (BT), on the grounds that, by disquotation, accepting the conjunction
(AT) Proposition p is true & (BT) Proposition not-p is true.
is the same as accept the contradiction
p & not-p.
If that is so, the possibility of radically di erent knowledges cannot so much as get o the
ground: if there is no sense in which we can endorse the conjunction (AT) & (BT), then we
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
21/28
cannot accept the claim that community (A) and (B) have incompatible knowledge-sets.
For many, this may be enough to show that the idea of incompatible knowledge-sets is
untenable, and must be abandoned along with epistemic pluralism itself. For others, it
will suggest that epistemic pluralists must be using the word knowledge to indicate somenon-factive concept, in which case it is plausible that classical epistemologist and epistemic
pluralist are simply talking past one another, labouring under the misapprehension that
their opponent is using the word knowledge to talk about the same thing as they are.
However, I shall suggest that there is an alternative option available to the epistemic
pluralist, which is to say that the truth required for knowledge the truth which is at
issue in (AT) and (BT) isrelative, rather than absolute truth. If the conjunction (AT) &
(BT) can be understood as saying that p is true for community A while not- p is true for
community B, then there is a sense in which we can endorse that conjunction, and henceendorse the claim that community A knows p while community B knows not- p, without
giving up the idea that knowledge requires truth. e suggestion, then, is this: we can
endorse
(AK) Community A knows proposition p & (BK) Community Bknows propo-
sition not- p
because we are able to accept something like the following:
(K) p is true (for Community A) and justi ed (according to Community As
standards), while not- p is true (for Community B) and justi ed (according to
Community Bs standards).
It seems that (K) enables us to make sense of the possibility of incompatible knowledge-
sets while maintaining the attractive idea that justi cation and truth are necessary for
knowledge.
I should note that on some relativist schemes, it is not possible even to accept (K), becausethere is no room for a semantic mechanism according to which we could endorse
p is true for community A
unless we were also prepared to endorse
p is true.
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
22/28
On such a system, there is no prospect of talking about how things are for people who
do not share our own circumstances. Fortunately, there is good reason not to impose such
a restriction: if we disallow the locution true for then there does not seem to be an easy
way to state the relativists own position, that what is true for us may di er from what istrue for you. Indeed, it is possible to make a persuasive case that, for the relativist, true
for is the fundamental notion, and uses of true in the object language are to be explained
in terms of the more primitive true for (Cappelen and Hawthorne : - ).
But is the epistemic pluralist proposal ultimately coherent? I shall suggest that it is not,
because it attempts to combine two incompatible views about what propositions are true
relative to. Consider the claim that p is true (for Community A). What kind of relativity is
this? If the relativity in question is to extend to all propositions which might be known
within the community, then it cannot be subject-sensitivity: for one thing, not every proposition has a logical subject (It is raining, something is in the cellar); for another,
making truth relative to the circumstances of the subject of a proposition would mean that
truth values were xed, once and for all, by facts about whoever the proposition is about
for example, claims about the origin of the Lakotas ancestors would be xed once and for
all by the circumstances of the Lakotas ancestors; but what is intended is that the truth
about the Lakotas ancestors varies between investigating communities.
It might be thought that some kind of global contextualism could capture the kind of
relativity at issue; the suggestion would be thatp is true relative to Community A becausetruth is relative to the context of useof p, and Community A in some sense count as the
users of p. However, there are notable problems with this approach, deriving from the fact
that, in assessing community As claims to knowledge, we are ascribing truth and falsity
to their beliefs rather than their utterances, and consequently ascribing truth and falsity to
propositional contents rather than thesentences used to assess them. First, it is not obvious
that we can assign a context of use to a belief, as it is hard to isolate any one circumstance
in which the believed content might be said to be used. Second, what is intended here is
that communities Aand Bhave genuinely incompatiblebeliefs; but standard contextualism
destroys the possibility of genuine disagreement, since it relativizes sentential truth-values
to contexts of use by allowing the context to determine which proposition is expressed;
within such a framework there is little room for the truth-values of a given propositional
content tovary according tocontext ofuse, since thenecessaryvariation is already delivered
by variation in the content expressed by a use of a sentence on an occasion. What is needed
to preserve the epistemic pluralist theory of radical disagreement between communities
is a form of non-indexical contextualism (MacFarlane ), according to which truth-
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
23/28
conditions, but not propositional content, vary according to the context of use. Yet even
here we are prevented from counting the propositional content of Community As beliefs
as true: since the notion of truth employed in such a contextualist account is sentential
rather than propositional truth, the only way in which we can ascribe truth to the contentof a belief is derivatively, by assigning truth to the sentence,
(PT) What community A believe in believing that p is true
But since we are uttering (PT), the context of use is our context; and p need not be true
according to our context so there is no guarantee that (PT) will be true either. If the only
way to endorse the content of Community As beliefs is by uttering a sentence claiming
that sentence to be true, and the truth-conditions of sentences are relative to the context
of use, then there is no way to endorse the content of the beliefs of those in a di erentcontext. Contextualism leaves us incapable of counting Community As beliefs as true
unless those beliefs also happen to be true for us.
One option remains, which avoids the problems consequent on contextualist approaches.
at is to make truth relative to the context of assessment. Such an assessment-relative
conception of truth can apply to propositions just as well as it applies to sentential truth:
one proposition can have many di erent assessors as easily as can one sentence. Moreover,
this option delivers the correct verdict with regard to the truth-value of Community As
beliefs. Although p may be false according toour context of assessment, and so is false forus, the members of Community A, since they believe thatp, count as assessors of p just
as we do; consequently there is a sense in which we can agree thatp is true for Community
A, by saying that p is true as assessed by Community A.
So it seems that, in order to accept the epistemic pluralist claim that community A might
know p while another community knows an incompatible proposition such as not- p, we
need to accept both that what counts for determining the truth of a proposition about
epistemic justi cation is the situation of the subject of the proposition (subject-sensitivity),
and that what counts for determining propositional truth in general is the situation of the assessor of the proposition (assessor-sensitivity). But since the latter claim is a general
one, it should apply no less to propositions about justi cation; thus it seems the epistemic
pluralist is committed to saying both that what counts, for propositions about justi cation,
is the situation of the subject, and that what counts, for propositions about justi cation,
is the situation of the assessor. is, I claim, is incoherent. In the following paragraphs I
explain and respond to the most signi cant objection to this charge of incoherence.
See MacFarlane , p. and Cappelen and Hawthorne , p. for similar points.
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
24/28
One objection to the argument I have just sketched will be especially prominent: doesnt
the whole thing just rest on some unsatisfactory fudging around the issue of disquotation?
I have argued thus: to accept that community A knows that p, we must accept that com-
munity A is justi ed in believing that p, and this is something we cannot accept by our standards of justi cation; therefore a claim like
(AJ) Community A is justi ed in believing proposition p.
must be subject-sensitive rather than assessor-sensitive. But surely we can nd an easier
way to accept (AJ). Suppose we simply accept the assessor-sensitivity of truth for all
propositions; then anyone in community A who assesses proposition (AJ) will do so with
regard to his own epistemic system, and count (AJ) as true. In that case, we can say that
(AJ*) (AJ) is true (for Community A).
from which it is a simple matter to infer (by disquotation) the original proposition
(AJ) Community A is justi ed in believing proposition p,
which we are now licensed to accept.
is is an interesting suggestion, but I do not think it works, for a reason already hinted at:
within a relativistic framework, we cannot apply a rule of disquotation of the kind that
takes us from (AJ*) to (AJ), simply because what is true for someone or other need not be
true for me. Indeed, allowing the move from p is true (for someone or other) to p would
result in us endorsing contradictions, for then we could move from accepting
(AT) Proposition p is true (for community A) & (BT) Proposition not-p is
true (for community B).
to accepting
p & not-p.
In order to count community A as knowing that p, we have to accept (AJ), not (AJ*), and
the only way we can accept (AJ) is if we hold that the relevant epistemic system for claims
about justi cation is not that of the assessor our own but rather than of the subject
whose justi cation is in question.
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
25/28
A second objection is that there is no incoherence in claiming that propositions about
justi cation are both subject-sensitive and assessor-sensitive, because there is no limit to
the number of extra parameters we may introduce to the evaluation of such a proposition.
Indeed, if relativists are happy to accept that context-sensitivity and assessor-sensitivity may coexist (MacFarlane b: ), why not accept that subject-sensitivity and assessor-
sensitivity may coexist in the evaluation of propositions about justi cation? Here the
response is that subject-sensitivity and assessor-sensitivity cannot coexist because they
are each competing to do one and the same job namely, to select the community
whose standards, experience and values are relevant to the evaluation of the proposition
in question. us subject-sensitivity suggests that the community whose standards are
relevant to evaluation are those of the community to which the subject of the epistemic
proposition belongs; the speci c sense in which these standards are relevant is that
they incorporate an epistemic system according to which the subject is to be judged
qua justi cation. Yet assessor-sensitivity says that the community relevant to evaluation
is that of the assessor ; any community-speci c factors which make a di erence to the
evaluation of a proposition (including, but not limited to, the epistemic system at play
in the community) should be those belonging to the assessors community. ese two
claims subject-sensitivity and assessor-sensitivity cannot both be upheld, because
then we would in many cases have to select two communities as determining the truth
of a proposition about judgement, and these communities are likely to disagree in the
evaluation they license.
A third objection the last I shall considerhere is that I may be setting upa straw man in
attributing to the relativist a viewthat predicts theassessment-sensitivityof all propositions.
Perhaps the intention of the epistemic pluralist might be captured more perspicuously
by the suggestion that the truths which form the content of the supposedly divergent
knowledges held by di erent communities for example, truths about human origins,
science, and the world are assessor-sensitive, while truths about the epistemic status
of those beliefs are not assessor-sensitive, but rather subject-sensitive. is is a coherent
position, but not one that it makes much sense to endorse. As I noted earlier, to accept thattruths about justi cation are subject-sensitive is to assert that there is one correct answer
to the question, Was Galileos belief justi ed by his evidence?, since subject-sensitivity
holds that there is only one epistemic system (that of the putative knower) that is relevant
to theevaluation of any claim about justi cation. So theproposed emendation of epistemic
pluralism leaves us committed to the view that there is, in a sense, absolute truth about
the justi cation of peoples beliefs, yet there is no absolute truth in areas such as science,
biology, and everyday descriptions of material objects. is seems to get things the wrong
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
26/28
way round! If there is no absolute truth about the world , why should there be how
could there be absolute truth about whether or not my beliefs were licensed by my
evidence?
Although it is possible to challenge the prima facie appearance of incoherence in the
epistemic pluralists commitment to both the subject-sensitivity of justi cation and the
assessment-sensitivity of propositional truth, it now seems that the incoherence in genuine.
e epistemic pluralist now has two options: one is to adopt the modest proposal that
justi cation is subject-sensitive, although truth in general is not assessment-sensitive. In
that case, what can be known within a community will be limited by what is (absolutely)
true, in which case we no longer have the possibility of radical disagreement, and the
theory no longer captures what the epistemic pluralist intends: it cannot be that the Lakota
know that they came from the spirit world, and yet we know that they came across theBering Strait, for when properly construed these claims are incompatible, and only one
can be known. Alternatively, it is possible to drop the subject-sensitivity of justi cation,
in which case propositions about justi cation will be assessor-sensitive like everything
else. But then, as I have argued, there is no way of counting adherents to other epistemic
systems as justi ed, since our evaluation of any claim about their epistemic status must
be governed by the assessors (our) epistemic system. In that case, although there may
be a pluralism of truth, we cannot recognize a pluralism of knowledge, for all of our
assessments of claims about justi cation (ours and everyone elses) must be governed by
our own parochial epistemic system. e Lakota do not count as knowing because their
epistemic practices do not measure up to our own epistemic standards.
A erword: Reason vs. Relativism
It is a point well made that the source of many peoples relativistic beliefs about what
would otherwise be called matters of fact is not, as it happens, any cogent philosophical
argument, but rather the result of a backlash against colonial arrogance in imposing
civilized belief-systems on the weaker party, and of the widespread belief that
the authority of reason, and the attendant rhetoric of objectivity, is a mask
for the interests of power.
See Boghossian a, p. for the same complaint levelled at theories which hold that the only absolute
facts there are, are facts about our beliefs.Kalderon , p. . e same point is found already in Boghossian , p.
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
27/28
If that is so, it is possible to make a case that the whole project of responding to relativism
by means of rational argument is mistaken, for it does not address the actual causes of
relativistic belief. us Kalderon suggests that
e source of relativistic conviction is relevant to the rhetorical e ectiveness
of undermining the arguments advanced in its favour. If the source of rel-
ativistic conviction does not lie with the cogency of these arguments, then
undermining them would leave relativistic conviction untouched.
It is strange that Kalderon makes his point in this way, as an allegation about the rhetorical
e ectiveness of undermining arguments for relativism, when his context is a discussion of
the cogency of Boghossians argument against epistemic relativism. Plausibly, a cogent
argument against a position can retain its e ectiveness even in situations where we rec-ognize that successful demolition of philosophical arguments for that position will be
dismissed as an irrelevance by our opponent. Nevertheless, the accusation that relativistic
conviction is impermeable to rational argument is a worrying one, and I shall nish by
o ering two remarks in defence of the current project of approaching relativism and
epistemic pluralism through rational argument.
First, philosophical argument is not merely evangelical: it is not the case that engaging
in rational debate is to be done only for the purpose of changing the minds of those with
whom we disagree. A primary aim of philosophical dispute (apart from the obvious one,of getting at the truth) is normative : to establish what we ought to believe. us it makes
little or no di erence to the value of philosophical argument if there exist people who (for
whatever reason) are so stubborn that no argument can unseat their prejudices. Clearly
there are such people; but that does not make rational debate any less worthwhile.
Second, it is nave to adopt a picture of the relationship between relativistic conviction and
philosophical argument in favour of relativism, such that the latter can make a di erence
to the former only if the latter was the cause of the former. Suppose that I have a prejudice
in favour of the view that we have Free Will (I do). at prejudice is not caused by any philosophical argument it is, if anything, the product of my upbringing and of
the kind of society I inhabit, plus a healthy dose of what I nd comfortable to believe.
Nevertheless, the cogency of arguments in favour of Free Will can make a di erence to
what I believe: if I examine all the rational arguments in favour of Free Will and nd
them wanting, I may become aware that my prejudice is merely a prejudice, and to that
extent nd myself less inclined to hang on to it once I become aware of the strength
Kalderon , p.
-
7/30/2019 Relativism About Knowledge
28/28
of the arguments pushing in the other direction. Just so, I suggest, even those whose
relativistic conviction was originally produced by factors other than reasoned argument
may be a ected by a successful demonstration that the arguments in favour of relativism
do not succeed. is will be especially so if as may actually be the case widespreadacceptance of relativism is combined with the widespread misconception that relativistic
theses are trivially coherent, philosophically unproblematic or even rationally mandated
by current theory. us, I suggest, there is work to be done in making sense of epistemic
relativism and epistemic pluralism, even in a world where the advice of philosophers is
seldom heeded.
References
Boghossian a.Fear of Knowledge Against Relativism and Constructivism. Oxford:Clarendon Press.
b. What is Relativism? In P. Greenough and M. Lynch (eds.), Truth and
Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cappelen, H., and Hawthorne, J. . Relativism and Monadic Truth . Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
DeRose, K. . Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions. In Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research : - .
DeRose, K. . Bamboozled by Our Own Words: Semantic Blindness and Some
Arguments Against Contextualism. In Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
: i)a( .
Hawthorne, J. .Knowledge and Lotteries. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kalderon, M. E. . Epistemic Relativism. InPhilosophical Review : - .
MacFarlane, J. a. e Assessment Sensitivity of Knowledge Attributions. InOxford
Studies in Epistemology : i)a( .
b. Making Sense of Relative Truth. InProceedings of the Aristotelian
Society : - .
. Relativism and Disagreement. InPhilosophical Studies : i)a( .
. Boghossian, Bellarmine, and Bayes. InPhilosophical Studies : - .
. Nonindexical Contextualism. InSynthese : i)a( .
Neta, R. . In Defense of Epistemic Relativism. InEpisteme : - .
Stanley, J. .Knowledge and Practical Interests. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wright, C. . Fear of Relativism? InPhilosophical Studies : - .