Epistemology: An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge

9. Cognitive Relativism and Contextualism

151 Chapter 9 Cognitive Relativism and Contextualism SYNOPSIS • Relativism is the position that any group’s standard of knowledge is on a par with any other’s, seeing that there is no “higher,” asituational standard from which those groups standards themselves can be assessed. • Actually, however, this sort of position gives a misleading interpretation of the situation because the only standard it makes sense to apply is our own standard—the one that we ourselves accept as the reasonable standard of epistemic appraisal. • Objectivity is not a matter of a “God’s-eye view” but one of what we ourselves can see as reasonable insofar as we try to be reasonable about it. • The rational primacy of our own position is—or should be—the pivot point. • And here as elsewhere, experience will provide us with crucial guidance if we are willing to listen to its teachings. • Accordingly relativism is a profoundly unreasonable practice. • To be sure, we have to operate within our own context, but contextualism is something very different from an indifferentist relativism, seeing that it pivots on making good rational sense of what one does in context. • Relativism’s Achilles’ heel is that it falls afoul of considerations of functional efficacy in relation to the aims and purposes that define the enterprise of rational inquiry. COGNITIVE REALISM The fact that our knowledge, and especially our scientific knowledge, rests on the continually growing database of ever-expanding observational horizons means that our present claims to truth in scientific matters—where precision and generality are paramount—involve an element of speculative hope. No doubt “the real truth” is the aim of the cognitive enterprise, but in this real and imperfect world of ours we have to accept the limitations of imperfection and face the fact that different inquirers living at different times and in different circumstances do have—and are bound to have—different ideas about the nature of things. Relativism is the doctrine that people make their judgments by standards and criteria that have no inherent validity or cogency because their standing and status lies solely and wholly in the sociological fact of their acceptance by the group.The norms of different schools of thought differ, but those different norms are entirely on a par with one another on a basis of “to each their own.” Beliefs are a matter of local custom, pretty much as is the case with ways of eating or greeting. In its general form, this relativist position has two prime components: 1. Basis Diversity. Judgments of the sort at issue—be it the true, or for that matter the good, the right, and so on—are always made relative to a potentially variable normative basis: a standard, criterion, or evaluative perspective regarding acceptability that change from one group to another. 2. Basis Egalitarianism. Any and every basis of normative appraisal— any and every such standard of assessment—is intrinsically as good (valid, appropriate) as any other. Egalitarian relativism in general holds that it is not rational to opt for one normatively ratified alternative than for any of its rivals because all norms are subject to change and variation. Relativism accordingly insists that the difference between fact and opinion may be all very nice in theory but is simply unimplementable in practice. Whatever we may see as constituting “our knowledge” is simply a matter of opinion through and through. And one set of group opinions is every bit as justified as any other. It is all just a matter of what people think. To believe anything else is no more than a recourse to the myth of the God’s-eye point of view—a point of view which, in the very nature of things cannot possibly be ours. Relativism thus understood does not deny that those who have a particular commitment (who belong to a particular school or tendency of thought) do indeed have a standard of judgment of some sort. But it insists that only custom speaks for that standard—that it is nothing more than just another contingent 152 Rational Inquiry and the Quest for Truth characteristic of the cognitive position of that particular group. It is all a matter of the parochial allegiances of the community—there is no larger, group-transcending “position of impersonal rationality” on whose basis one particular standard could reasonably and appropriately be defended as inherently superior to any other.The cognitive relativist, in...