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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Epistemic relativism cannot be coherently formulated.

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.The epistemic relativist holds that any claim of the form 'Evidence E justifies belief B' must be construed as relative to an epistemic system C that the subject S accepts.
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    • 2.When the relativist sets up an opposition between two or more alternative non-convergent epistemic systems, the relativist cannot avoid assuming the universality of at least some epistemic principles, including deduction, induction, and warrant through empirical evidence.
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    • 3.There is no coherent way for the relativist to account for what it means to accept or adhere to a given epistemic system under the relativist's own framework.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Any coherent relativist framework must identify a meta-standard by which competing epistemic systems are recognized as genuinely distinct, yet no such standard can itself be system-relative without vicious regress.
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    • 2.Wittgenstein's notion of 'hinge propositions' in On Certainty reveals that some epistemic commitments must function as absolute anchors, undermining the relativist's claim that all justification is framework-internal.
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    • 3.Hilary Putnam's self-refutation argument shows that relativism, when asserted as a thesis, implicitly claims trans-framework truth, consuming itself in the act of formulation.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Donald Davidson's argument against conceptual schemes demonstrates that intelligible disagreement between epistemic systems presupposes enough shared rationality to make radical epistemic divergence incoherent.
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    • 2.If two epistemic systems are sufficiently incommensurable to support relativism, they cannot be recognized as rival systems at all, collapsing relativism into mere mutual unintelligibility rather than a positive philosophical thesis.
      ?

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