Epistemic Relativism and Scepticism

Unwinding the Braid

Steven Bland

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9783319946726
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319946733
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Epistemology in Philosophy

This book confronts the threats of epistemic relativism and Pyrrhonian scepticism to analytic philosophy.  Epistemic relativists reject absolute notions of knowledge and justification, while sceptics claim that knowledge and justification of any kind are unattainable.  If either of these views is correct, then there can be no objective basis for thinking that one set of methods does a better job of delivering accurate information than any other set of methods. Philosophers have generally sought to resist these threats by responding to the argument that seems to motivate both positions: the Agrippan trilemma.  Steven Bland argues that this is a mistaken strategy. He surveys the most influential responses to the Agrippan trilemma, and shows that none of them succeeds in undermining epistemic relativism.  Bland also offers a new, dialectical strategy of challenging epistemic relativism by uncovering how epistemic methods depend on one another for their applications.  By means of this novel analysis, the book concludes that there are principled reasons to prefer naturalistic to non-naturalistic methods, even if these reasons do little to ease the threat of scepticism.

© The Author(s) 2018

Steven BlandEpistemic Relativism and Scepticismhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94673-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Steven Bland¹

(1)

Huron University College at Western University, London, ON, Canada

Steven Bland

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

This book is a study of twin threats that strike at the heart of analytic philosophy: Pyrrhonian scepticism and epistemic relativism. Scepticism and relativism are often understood as epistemic doctrines whose main purpose is to undermine philosophers’ views about knowledge and justification. Sceptics claim that none of our beliefs can be properly justified, and therefore knowledge of any kind is unattainable. Relativists maintain that knowledge and justification can be attained, but only within systems of presuppositions and methods whose epistemic authority is unavoidably local. In either case, philosophers cannot possess the kind of absolute knowledge they think of themselves as having or striving towards.

The most significant threat posed by sceptics and relativists, though, does not consist in the counter-intuitive epistemic views they espouse. Rather, it consists in their outright rejection of the traditional philosophical enterprise. Of course, they do make epistemic claims, but their main intent in doing so is to compel philosophers to recognize their limitations in attempting to reach rational consensus. Sextus Empiricus makes this abundantly clear in his characterization of scepticism:

Scepticism is an ability to set out oppositions among things which appear and are thought of in any way at all, and an ability by which, because of the equipollence in the opposed objects and accounts, we come first to suspension of judgement and afterwards to tranquillity. (Sextus Empiricus 2000, 4)

Sceptics do not take sides in philosophical debates about the nature of reality because they believe that such debates cannot be won. In order to avoid the anxieties that result from participating in futile debate, they maintain an attitude of ambivalence in all philosophical matters, passing judgement only on how things appear to them. Scepticism is thus not a proper philosophical position, but a rejection of the philosophical enterprise, or some traditional characterization thereof.

Richard Rorty is similarly clear that his relativist views force a move from epistemology to the discipline of hermeneutics: “…epistemology proceeds on the assumption that all contributions to a given discourse are commensurable. Hermeneutics is largely a struggle against this assumption” (Rorty 1979, 316).¹ Once we give up the epistemologist’s dream of discovering the privileged epistemic system in which all disputes can be rationally resolved, we must content ourselves with the project of fostering conversations that neither presuppose nor require such common ground. Unlike sceptics, Rorty does not wish to give up philosophy altogether, but he does seek to transform it from a discipline that sees discussion as a means to rational consensus to a discipline that regards discussion as an end in itself.² Epistemic relativism can also be seen as an important impetus towards the anti-traditional movements of deconstructionism (Baghramian 2004, Ch. 3), epistemological anarchism (Baghramian , Ch. 6), and radical conventionalism (see Chapter 3).

In addition to having similar meta-philosophical aims, Pyrrhonian scepticism and epistemic relativism are motivated by a common argument, known as the Agrippan trilemma. Sceptics insist that no disagreement about how things stand in reality can be rationally resolved because every party’s attempt to justify their position must result in a series of reasons that goes on indefinitely, terminates with a dogmatic assertion, or circles back on itself—this is the trilemma. Since none of these outcomes yield justification, we must do without knowledge and deliberative consensus. Relativists, by contrast, claim that such disagreements do admit of rational resolutions, as long as they take place within a shared system of basic principles and methods. However, when inquirers disagree on a subject because they subscribe to distinct epistemic systems , rational argumentation will necessarily fail because evaluations of epistemic systems fall prey to the Agrippan trilemma . Justification and consensus are intra-system, not inter-system, achievements.

Naturally, neither of these conclusions is welcomed by philosophers who work within the traditions that are attacked by sceptics and relativists. The most popular strategies of resisting them involve responding to the Agrippan argument that motivates both positions. The primary purpose of this book is to argue that Pyrrhonian scepticism and epistemic relativism should be treated as separate threats, to be resisted by means of different argumentative strategies. In pursuing this purpose, I will look to accomplish the following goals:

1. 1.
   To understand how the five modes of Pyrrhonian scepticism function in the principal argument for epistemic relativism (Chapters 1–3).
2. 2.
   To reveal the shortcomings of anti-sceptical attacks on epistemic relativism (Chapters 4–8).
3. 3.
   To offer an alternative strategy for resisting epistemic relativism (Chapter 9).

The remainder of this chapter outlines how these goals will be pursued in subsequent chapters.

1.1 Relativism, Scepticism, and Analytic Philosophy

The principal target of this book is epistemic relativism. Unlike other unpopular philosophical positions, relativism is almost universally disdained by analytic philosophers because it challenges suppositions that are essential to the intellectual exercises in which they take part. Rorty himself says: “…we can see the abandonment of the search for privileged representations as the abandonment of the goal of a “theory of knowledge”” (Rorty 1979, 211).³ Susan Haack thinks there is even more at stake:

There could be no honest intellectual work in Rorty’s post-epistemological utopia. Unless there is such a thing as better and worse evidence for accepting this or that proposition as true – objectively better or worse evidence, that is – there can be no real inquiry of any kind: epistemological … or scientific, forensic, historical, mathematical. (Haack 1993, 194)

If genuine rational inquiry is understood as a non-arbitrary search for the truth, then Rorty would have us give up on this project by rejecting one of its essential presuppositions:

The absolutist presumption : there are objectively better and worse ways of acquiring knowledge.

If every operative epistemic method is on a par, then the use of any particular method of inquiry is arbitrary with respect to the inquirer’s goal of approaching the truth.⁴ He thus agrees with Haack that what she calls real inquiry is impossible from his hermeneutical perspective.

If this move away from traditional inquiry is to be successfully resisted, the absolutist presumption must not only be true, but justified; it cannot remain a presumption. And to justify the presumption we must know something about which ways of acquiring knowledge are objectively better than others. Since analytic philosophers like Haack typically rely on broadly naturalistic methods of epistemic evaluation—deductive, inductive, and abductive reasoning, conceptual analysis, perception, memory, etc.—they must also be able to defend the following principle:

The naturalist presumption : broadly naturalistic epistemic practices are objectively better than non-naturalistic practices.

If philosophers, and inquirers more generally, cannot defend the absolutist and naturalist presumptions, then they have no rational grounds on which to claim that their epistemic practices are uniquely well suited to their investigations, and no recourse when presented with radically different practices that yield contrary outcomes.

If the primary goal of our epistemic practices is to knowingly approach the truth, then one set of practices is better than another when it is more truth-conducive, i.e., when it yields a higher ratio of true beliefs to false ones (Haack 1993, 186). Thus, it would seem that a defense of the absolutist and naturalist presumptions must satisfy the following justification requirement :

The absolutist must be able to justify her belief that some epistemic practices are more truth-conducive than others.

The naturalist must be able to justify her belief that naturalistic epistemic practices are more truth-conducive than non-naturalistic practices.

However, epistemic relativists claim that any attempt to show that a set of epistemic practices is truth-conducive will inevitably fall prey to Agrippa’s trilemma:

The absolutist’s trilemma: when justifying a particular set of epistemic practices, the absolutist must either (i) defend them by appealing to some further practice(s), (ii) defend them by means of the very practices that are in question, or (iii) decline to defend them.

The naturalist’s trilemma: when justifying her epistemic practices, the naturalist must either (i) defend them by non-naturalistic means, (ii) defend them by naturalistic means, or (iii) decline to defend them.

Relativists argue that none of these options yield a proper justification for the epistemic practices in question. Option (i) amounts to giving up on one’s epistemic practices in favour of others; option (ii) amounts to begging the question; and option (iii) is no defense at all. And if no epistemic practice can be shown to be truth-conducive, then the justification requirement cannot be met, which means that there can be no objective grounds for preferring one set of practices over another. We are thus led to the relativist conclusion that the absolutist and naturalist presumptions are indefensible. The role of the Agrippan trilemma in this argument for epistemic relativism is the topic of Chapter 2.

Some philosophers see no need to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Principal Argument for Epistemic Relativism
• 3. Epistemic Relativism in the Analytic Tradition
• 4. Foundationalism and Coherentism
• 5. Externalism
• 6. Particularism and Methodism
• 7. The Charge of Incoherence
• 8. The Wittgensteinian Position
• 9. A Dialectical Strategy
• 10. Conclusions
• Back Matter