Relativism

Harvey Siegel

pp. 747-780

in: Ilkka Niiniluoto, Matti Sintonen, Jan Woleński (eds), Handbook of epistemology, Berlin, Springer, 2004

Abstract

Epistemological¹ relativism may be defined as the view that knowledge (and/or truth or justification²) is relative — to time, to place, to society, to culture, to historical epoch, to conceptual scheme or framework, or to personal training or conviction — in that what counts as knowledge (or as true or justified) depends upon the value of one or more of these variables. Knowledge is relative in this way, according to the relativist, because different cultures, societies, epochs, etc. accept different sets of background principles, criteria, and/or standards³ of evaluation for knowledge-claims, and there is no neutral way of choosing between these alternative sets of standards. So the relativist's basic thesis is that a claim's status as knowledge (and/or the truth or rational justifiability of such knowledge-claims) is relative to the standards used in evaluating such claims; and (further) that such alternative standards cannot themselves be neutrally evaluated in terms of some fair, encompassing meta-standard.⁴ (The character of such "neutrality' is addressed below.)