Epistemic Relativism

A Constructive Critique

M. Seidel

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137377890
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Epistemología en filosofía

Markus Seidel provides a detailed critique of epistemic relativism in the sociology of scientific knowledge. In addition to scrutinizing the main arguments for epistemic relativismhe provides an absolutist account that nevertheless aims at integrating the relativist's intuition.

1

Setting the Stage: Epistemic Relativism in the Strong Programme and Beyond

In this chapter, my aim is to provide a sensible definition of epistemic relativism and to justify the use of this definition on the basis of a close reading of the texts of Barnes and Bloor. Furthermore, it will be pointed out how the debate about epistemic relativism relates to other very fundamental debates and positions in epistemology.

1.1 What is epistemic relativism?

It is a prerequisite of any adequate argument against a position that it is clear right from the start what the position attacked is, and that it makes sure not to attack a straw man. This section will provide a discussion of what Barnes and Bloor mean by ‘relativism’ and end with a definition of epistemic relativism that will then be used throughout this book.

1.1.1 Difficulties in interpreting the relativism of the Strong Programme: ‘switcheroos’, the innocent and the not-so-innocent reading of the equivalence postulate, and alethic relativism

As David Bloor maintains, “[there] is no denying that the strong programme in the sociology of knowledge rests on a form of relativism” (Bloor 1991, 158). However, it is not easy to come to grips with the form of relativism proposed by Barnes and Bloor. One common response to criticism – especially by Bloor – is that the critic has severely misunderstood their thesis.¹ Sometimes this response is quite right – for example, though in this book I will be mainly on the side of Paul Boghossian by attacking epistemic relativism, his exposition of the position of the Strong Programme in his book Fear of Knowledge is unsatisfactory.² Sometimes, however, the Strong Programmers commit what André Kukla has called switcheroos:

One commits a switcheroo by starting with a hypothesis that’s amenable to a range of interpretations, giving arguments that support a weak version, and thenceforth pretending that one of the stronger versions has been established. (Kukla 2000, x)

Furthermore, what can also be found in the writings of the Strong Programme are reverse switcheroos:

you put forth a strong version of the hypothesis, and when it gets into trouble, you retreat to a weaker version, pretending that it was the weaker thesis that you had in mind all along. (Kukla 2000, x)

To give just one example: Barnes and Bloor claim that for the relativist

there is no sense attached to the idea that some standards or beliefs are really rational as distinct from merely locally accepted as such. [He] thinks that there are no context-free or super-cultural norms of rationality. (Barnes/Bloor 1982, 27)³

In a recent paper, Bloor complains that he was misunderstood however by, for example, Boghossian who has quoted this passage:⁴

What [the relativists] actually said was that the credibility of all theories should be treated as equally problematic. The sociologist’s curiosity should be aroused equally in all cases. (Bloor 2011, 452)

That is a reverse switcheroo: claiming, firstly, that ‘there is no sense attached to the idea’ of non-relative, rational standards and that there are no context-free norms of rationality and, when the thesis is attacked, then claiming that the thesis was just meant to be about sociological curious concerning both, rationality and irrationality. In what follows, I will be as charitable as possible and I will not dwell on most switcheroos and reverse switcheroos that can be found in Barnes’ and Bloor’s work. To my mind, focusing on the ambiguities, switcheroos and lack of clarity of the theses of the Strong Programme has not lead to much advancement in the debate. Especially, this focus – though satisfied⁵ – has lead critics to overlook that something interesting might be found concerning epistemological questions in the works of the Strong Programme. In what follows, therefore, it might appear to some readers that I am far too charitable with the quotes from the Strong Programme – I choose this strategy, however, in order to highlight the best arguments that can be found in their work. Nevertheless, even by these arguments I am not convinced.

With these remarks and caveats in mind, let us try to find out what Barnes and Bloor mean by ‘relativism’. Barnes and Bloor are well aware that there are forms of relativism that are self-refuting – obviously they try to propose a not self-refuting one. They identify three features of all – self-refuting as well as potentially consistent – forms of relativism:

The simple starting-point of relativist doctrines is (i) the observation that beliefs on a certain topic vary, and (ii) the conviction that which of these beliefs is found in a given context depends on, or is relative to, the circumstances of the users. But there is always a third feature of relativism. It requires what may be called a ‘symmetry’ or an ‘equivalence’ postulate. (Barnes/Bloor 1982, 22)⁶

This quote needs some exposition. First of all, it has to be noted that this description is – according to the claims of Barnes and Bloor themselves – inadequate, if it is meant to give necessary features of relativism.⁷ For, they argue, it is neither necessary that we observe that beliefs on a certain topic vary nor necessary that beliefs on a topic vary at all in order to maintain a relativist claim – as Ernest Gellner has noticed: ‘[Relativism] is perfectly compatible with the existence of any number of, so to speak, de facto or contingent human “universals”’ (Gellner 1982, 183).⁸ It might be argued that e.g. as a matter of fact all humans reason along the lines of modus ponens, but such a contingently universal character of this form of inference does not necessarily contradict the relativist’s claim. This is a point that Barnes and Bloor explicitly appreciate:

Relativists are interested in cultural variation. [What] happens to the relativist position when it is discovered that all cultures have certain things in common? [Does] the existence of cultural universals of this kind prove relativism is false? No. Cultural uniformity merely demonstrates that some things are widespread. To refute relativism, it would have to be shown that a cultural universal was not merely contingently universal but necessarily so. A worldwide contingency does not stand in contradiction to relativism. (Bloor 2007a, 267)⁹

Therefore, it seems as if by talking of the ‘simple starting-point’ in the quote above they merely want to claim that (i) and (ii) motivate relativist claims and not that they are necessary for them.

In what follows, I will argue that this cannot be right in the end: it is necessary for the epistemic relativist to hold the thesis that there are radically or fundamentally different epistemic systems. The reason is that the epistemic absolutist has no problem accepting the following two theses:

(Fault-Dis) People using different epistemic systems (consisting of epistemic standards) can faultlessly disagree over the question whether a given belief is epistemically justified or not.¹⁰

(Dif-Epi-Weak) There are people using different epistemic systems for which (Fault-Dis) applies.

The reader might be surprised that I believe that it is possible for the epistemic absolutist to accept (Fault-Dis) and (Dif-Epi-Weak) without subscribing to epistemic relativism. However, I will show how this is possible in the next section.

Let us come back to Barnes and Bloor. Despite the problems of interpreting their form of relativism, I will therefore assume that according to the Strong Programme it is necessary and sufficient for a relativist position to embrace a certain kind of equivalence postulate; i.e. I will only care about the third feature mentioned by Barnes and Bloor.¹¹

Depending on what kind of equivalence postulate you are choosing, you get different kinds of relativism: it is possible to distinguish between what might be called ‘evaluative relativism’ and ‘methodological relativism’.¹² The first of these kinds – officially dismissed by Barnes and Bloor¹³ – depends on an equivalence postulate like the following:

Equal Validity: There are many radically different, yet “equally valid” ways of knowing the world, with science being just one of them. (Boghossian 2006, 2)

The effect of such a postulate of equal validity so the Strong Programmers believe, is that it could be

claimed that general conceptions of the natural order, whether the Aristotelian world view, the cosmology of a primitive people, or the cosmology of an Einstein, are all alike in being false, or are all equally true. (Barnes/Bloor 1982, 22)

The second kind of relativism does not – officially – depend on an equivalence postulate concerning the question of the evaluation of beliefs. It is the one proposed by Barnes and Bloor:

Our equivalence postulate is that all beliefs are on a par with one another with respect to the causes of their credibility. It is not that all beliefs are equally true or equally false, but that regardless of truth and falsity the fact of their credibility is to be seen as equally problematic. The position we shall defend is that the incidence of all beliefs without exception calls for empirical investigation and must be accounted for by finding the specific, local causes of this credibility. This means that regardless of whether the sociologist evaluates a belief as true or rational, or as false and irrational, he must search for the causes of its credibility. (Barnes/Bloor 1982, 23)¹⁴

This equivalence postulate is an amalgam of the famous four tenets of causality, impartiality, symmetry and reflexivity that are the basis of the Strong Programme.¹⁵ We should not be much disturbed – at this point at least – by the fact that in the quote Barnes and Bloor do speak about truth and falsity and rationality and irrationality, thus suggesting an equivalence postulate with respect to truth and an equivalence postulate with respect to rationality. The Strong Programmers think that both kinds of dichotomies point to the same procedure¹⁶ – the evaluation of belief in order to sort out those beliefs that cannot and should not be investigated by sociological means. The idea of ‘methodological relativism’ in contrast to ‘evaluative relativism’ would then be not to relativize truth and rationality themselves but simply consist in the methodological advice for the sociologist not to care in her investigations whether beliefs are true/false and rational/irrational.¹⁷ This kind of relativism can, according to Bloor, be ‘expressed in terms of “bracketing off” evaluation for the purposes of conducting a causal explanation’ (Bloor 2004, 937). The Strong Programmers think that not following such a procedure is the basis of a ‘sociology of error’ that restricts sociological explanation just to the false and to the irrationally held beliefs. Such a ‘sociology of error’, Barnes and Bloor claim, is held not only by philosophers; for example, they indict also the early sociologist Karl Mannheim for falling prey to such a sociology of error by exempting the contents of beliefs in mathematics and the natural sciences from sociological analyses. Thus, so they believe, it does not matter what kind of ‘evaluative’ distinction (truth/falsity, rational/irrational) is used by philosophers and ‘weak programmers’ as long as we see clearly that it is used to wrongly propose a ‘sociology of error’. Therefore, the considerations in this paragraph can be summarized by quoting Bloor on ‘methodological relativism’:

[The Strong Programme] adopts what may be called ‘methodological relativism’, a position summarized in the symmetry and reflexivity requirements that were defined earlier. All beliefs are to be explained in the same way regardless of how they are evaluated. (Bloor 1991, 158)¹⁸

Two points should be made on this: first of all, and as I have argued elsewhere,¹⁹ I am convinced that Barnes’ and Bloor’s treatment of Karl Mannheim does not get the theoretical background of Mannheim’s approach in the sociology of knowledge right. Mannheim simply did not exempt the contents of beliefs in mathematics and in the natural sciences due to – as Bloor says – “lack of nerve and will” (Bloor 1991, 4). Mannheim believes that it is exactly the sociological investigation of mathematics and the natural sciences that justifies the exemption of the contents of beliefs in these areas from sociological investigation.²⁰

Secondly, note that if it is only ‘methodological relativism’ that Barnes and Bloor are after then much of what Barnes and Bloor say in the quote that introduced their equivalence-postulate should not disturb an epistemic absolutist very much. In fact, she should accept much of it. Take the last statement that the sociologist should investigate the (social) causes of the credibility of beliefs regardless of whether they are rationally or irrationally held. Depending on what ‘credibility’ means here, there is either a very innocent reading of the claim or a more disturbing one for the epistemic absolutist. To take the example of the sociology of religion: I think that it is a good enterprise that the sociological investigation of what is the (social) cause of the beliefs of people of a specific creed goes on without any regard of whether this creed is true or false and irrationally or rationally held. A sociologist of religion who also believes that there exists only one omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent transcendent being would simply not be a good sociologist of religion if she were to investigate only what has caused believers of polytheistic religions to believe what they believe, because she th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1  Setting the Stage: Epistemic Relativism in the Strong Programme and Beyond
• 2  Realism and the Argument from Underdetermination
• 3  Norm-Circularity
• 4  Epistemic Absolutism That Can Accommodate the Relativists Intuition
• Summary and Outlook
• Notes
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index