Relativism About Knowledge

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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.


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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


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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.


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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.


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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.


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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.


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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.


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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


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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.


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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.


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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


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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.


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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.


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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 ( )


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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


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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.


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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


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(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


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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.


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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


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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.


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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-


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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.


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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.


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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


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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.


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.


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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 : - .

Relativism About Knowledge

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