Introduction: Epistemic Relativism

Introduction:

Epistemic Relativism

Versions of Epistemic Relativism

This issue of Episteme is devoted to the topic of epistemic relativism. It includes a symposium on Paul Boghossian's treatment of epistemic relativism in chapters 5 through 7 of his new book, Fear of Knowledge (2006). The symposium centers on Boghossian's argument against epistemic relativism in chapter 6 of that book. In their contributions to the symposium, Gideon Rosen and Ram Neta offer criticisms of Boghossian's argument, and Neta argues for a version of epistemic relativism. In addition to the symposium, Jonathan Weinberg, Michael Williams, and Roger White supply stand-alone articles on related topics. The purpose of this introduction is to situate epistemic relativism in the constellation of relativist views, to distinguish several forms of epistemic relativism, and to remark briefly on how the versions of relativism discussed in the articles in this issue fit these forms of relativism.

Among the many forms of relativism, the most familiar is relativism about truth, sometimes called alethic, semantic, or Protagorean relativism – the view that there are no absolute truths; there are only truths relative to ascribers of truth. Alethic relativism is often traced to Protagoras, who said that "man is the measure of all things, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not."¹ The view is traditionally motivated by the observation that things seem one way to one person and a contrary way to another person, together with the claim that, although for at least one of these contrary ways, it must be true that things are that way, nothing makes it true that things are one way rather than the other; hence, for each of these ways, it is true that things are that way, albeit relative to the subject to whom it seems so. Protagorean relativism was attacked in Plato's Theaetetus (according to the standard interpretation of that dialogue) on the ground that a fully general version of relativism about truth is self-refuting.² Such a general version of relativism about truth has also been attacked on the ground that it precludes any particular truth-values of propositions, even relative truth-values.³ These criticisms are avoided if relativism about truth is restricted to a small enough proper subset of the universal class of propositions. The alethic relativist might hope to capture what was wanted from a fully general relativism in such a restricted relativism. For this purpose, an alethic relativism restricted to truths about justified belief seems most promising. The motivation for alethic relativism – that things seem contrary ways to different people, and nothing makes it true that things are one way rather than the other – is more persuasive for things to do with justification than for things in general. What is best motivated, then, is not that there are no absolute truths at all but that there are no absolute truths about justification. We may call this restricted alethic relativism alethic epistemic relativism.

Remarks similar to those we have just made about alethic relativism may be made about relativism about facts, or metaphysical relativism.⁴ This may be formulated as the view that there are no facts, or (what may be the same thing) no absolute facts; so there are no (absolute) facts to make propositions absolutely true; there are at most truths relative to truth-ascribers.⁵ The reasons given above for restricting alethic relativism to propositions about justification are equally reasons for restricting metaphysical relativism to (absolute) facts about justification – a view we may call metaphysical epistemic relativism. To a first approximation, this is the view that there are no (absolute) facts about justification, hence no absolute truths about justification; there are at most truths relative to ascribers of justification. Boghossian (2006) considers a variant of this view, which he calls "epistemic relativism." I will follow his usage here. The view is the target of our symposium and of Weinberg...