Definition of Epistemological Relativism - Literature review Example

RUNNING HEAD: EPISTEMOLOGICAL RELATIVISM Epistemological Relativism [Name of the Writer] [Name of the Institution] Epistemological Relativism Introduction The advocates of intelligent design may join hands with some postmodernists – among whom paradoxically there must be many atheists – in the practice of cognitive relativism. Cognitive relativism (also called epistemic or epistemological relativism) is a philosophy that claims that the truth or falsity of a statement is relative to a social group or individual. Eventually, every statement becomes valid and comparable to any other, with independence of the degree of reason or verification. Both groups tend to neglect the ability of humans to acquire objective knowledge through, and in spite of, their own subjectivity. Science is intimately linked to a materialistic conception of the world. Materialism assumes that reality exists independently from the observer. This does not mean that a materialist is an insensitive individual with no ethical values or affections. Conscious or unconsciously scientists are materialists and when asked if it is possible to know reality, most of us will answer yes. In any case we will accept that our knowledge bears a certain degree of error or uncertainty, that scientific truths are necessarily transient and that the magnitude of error in our observations in some cases can even be very high. However, we would not doubt that some scientific theories, such as the roundness of the Earth for example, have been confirmed by a panoply of independent observations indicating that we are indeed able to acquire objective knowledge. (Rorty, 1980) For the cognitive relativists all knowledge is necessarily subjective and scientific statements are nothing but the agreement of many subjectivities – if everybody says the King is dressed, ‘the King is dressed’. In their criticism of cognitive relativism Sokal and Bricmont (2) mention that in a leaflet for the formation of high school teachers in Belgium, a fact is defined as an interpretation of a situation that nobody wants to question. To illustrate this definition it is said that ‘for centuries it was considered as a fact that the Sun rotated around the Earth. The advent of another theory such as the revolution of the Earth around the Sun implies the replacement of a fact by another one (sic)’. The leaflet authors do not want to admit that a fact is something that occurs outside us, independently from our conscience and interpretation. According to them, the Earth began to revolve around the Sun only after Copernicus, in the XV century! The immediate corollary would be that the more people believe in a statement, the higher the truth value of that statement (Raven, 1992). If most people believe that God created men, it becomes a fact that God created men, as if the truth of scientific ideas were to be decided democratically and the one receiving the most votes was the one to be accepted. If significant truth can be so only relative to a society – we are, in a modest way, in the world of epistemological relativism – then discovering what are the significant truths, discovering, that is to say, what is an appropriate agenda for science, turns out to be the business of sociology or anyhow some empirical study of particular societies. Given these surprisingly radical conclusions, it is worth going back a bit and looking more carefully at the premises that gave rise to them. The idea that science is concerned with significant truth, and therefore that its appropriate agenda can only be defined relative to a society, could be resisted either by supposing that there was an exhaustible complete truth that science was in the business of delineating, or by insisting that there was something inherent in some facts rather than others that made them intrinsically significant. The most promising strategy combines elements of these responses. The idea of a complete truth is naturally associated with the idea of the unity of science. (Raven, 1992)Traditionally, the idea of unity of science is associated, in turn, with physicalist reductionism, the imagined process of reducing the whole of science to physics. If one adhered to a really ambitious programme of physicalist reductionism it might perhaps be plausible to defend a conception of intrinsically significant truths, defined in terms of their closeness to the fundamental physical laws from which all truth was held, and might ultimately even be shown, to flow. The Role of Kuhn Cognitive relativism was first established in the social sciences under the influence of the ideas of Kuhn (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions put forward the idea that the history of science was less linear than the manuals on history and philosophy of science had previously depicted it. He emphasised that scientific discussions appeared not always to consist of the exchange of 'rational' arguments (in the sense given to that adjective by the philosophy of science). The criteria on the basis of which a theory was deemed scientific could be for example aesthetic or philosophical, or indeed political, quite as much as rational. Some ideas of this sort would seem to be perfectly acceptable. It even seems curious, with the passing of time, that The Structure of Scientific Revolutions should have been perceived as a revolutionary work, and that should have set in motion what Bunge (1999) refers to as the 'new sociology of science': a movement of thought that was to produce more and more radically relativist views of scientific knowledge and, in the last resort, to deny the sciences any capacity achieve an 'objective' view of natural phenomena. Some of these relativist views make scientific theories constructions that are no more guaranteed to be 'objective' than representations of the world derived from mythologies. According to Feyerabend (1975), they are just 'fairy tales'. Why has this form of relativism taken hold? Why has it taken such extreme forms? The point of departure of this process comes from some of the convincingly detailed studies on which Kuhn relies. It is true to say that when we analyse scientific controversy in detail, we notice that the scientist's choice between this or that theory will depend partly on 'irrational' criteria. On the other hand, it is true that this view contradicts the arguments of the philosophy of science that was current at the time when Kuhn was writing, for example the theses that Popper had developed under the rubric of 'critical rationalism'. And lastly, it is true that many of scholarly books convey and will always convey a 'rational' picture of the history of science. So it can be seen that Kuhn, even though he expounded propositions that could easily pass as commonplace, gave the impression of having initiated a revolution in the then current conception of the sciences. The revolution that he triggered was grafted on to one solid core of insight: the certified historic fact that the process through which scientific theories are selected is less rational than it is described in the classical history and philosophy of science. The Improper Use of the Principle of the Excluded Middle So let us take aim at a cognitive mechanism that can be readily spotted at work in a great many circumstances: the improper use of the principle of the excluded middle. It consists, specifically, of setting up contrary terms as contradictory terms. For example: if an object is not white, it must be black. An improper use of the principle of the excluded middle can clearly be seen here. Either the selection of scientific ideas is rational or it is not. Either the criterion or criteria for demarcating between science and non-science can be established, or else they cannot. If it is not possible to determine the criteria of demarcation between science and non-science, it is because there are none and this distinction between science and non-science is merely an illusion. Whence it is concluded that a scientific theory cannot pretend to be more objective than a mythical interpretation of natural phenomena. The cognitive mechanism of the improper usage of the principal of the excluded middle leads from Kuhn to Feyerbend. Scheler’s 'Sluice Gates' and the Paretian Distinction between 'Truth’ and 'Usefulness' To complete this analysis, reference must be made to one other factor responsible for the reception of cognitive relativism. Max Scheler argued that, depending on the conditions, an idea could or could not pass through virtual 'sluice gates': other things being equal, an idea has .more chance of being accepted if it is congruent with the mood of the times or with this or that sort of collective interest.' Pareto, in the same vein, suggested that to understand the reception a theory receives; one has to examine not only whether it is 'true', whether it is believable, but also whether it is 'useful'. He meant that certain ideas are endorsed, not just because they seem believable but because they correspond with cognitive, ideological or material interests, with caste, class or groups interests, and so on. A New Epistemology for Science The need for a new epistemology is less radical than the need for a new science, since in postmodern thought epistemology is essentially parasitic upon the sciences that exist in a given culture. Epistemology is the attempt to give an abstract reconstruction and coherent expression of methodologies and concepts already present in cultural practice. This is a far cry from the view of epistemology as an a priori discipline whose task is to explore the timeless grounds of knowledge and reasoning. The new approach is, however, thoroughly consistent with the theoretical and methodological flexibility of the sciences themselves in Westernised society. The key concept of the new epistemology is that the relationships and arguments within knowledge-systems are like those in everyday discourse, namely the exploitation of similarities, comparisons, analogies, regularities, models and metaphors. This contrasts with standard philosophy of science, with its predominantly logical vocabulary. For example, explanations and reductions are deductive; theoretical and observational assertions are understood in terms of a propositional or higher-order logic, and hence have one of the two-valued truth-values, true or false; objects are ideally named according to precisely defined classes, and consequently the language of science is one of universals and univocal meanings. Related to all this is the realist thesis that science aims at true theories, and at universally quantifiable laws, which some regard as being necessary in the sense of modal logic. This whole complex of ideas was clearly modeled on the pattern of physics, where precise definition, univocal meanings, and mathematical arguments have apparently held sway as the ideal type of science. The Postmodern Dilemma Relativists are bound to regard the epistemological dilemma of postmodernism as an unreal one. For them there is no comprehensive epistemology in terms of which conflicts of basic commitment can be adjudicated, but there are social, political and ethical standpoints in terms of which knowledge claims can be judged according to criteria internal to each system. It is not only relativists who take this view, but also those who commit themselves to some explicit ideology, whether because they are convinced of its truth, or simply because they accept the ethos and values of their own culture. (Gadamer, 1975) One of these value-systems, pervasive in our society, is what may loosely be called the liberal consensus. This is principally concerned with a set of inalienable human rights, which ideally cross all social barriers including those of gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and physical, mental and ethical disability. Examples of the practical consequences of the liberal consensus abound in such current debates as the ethics of punishment, censorship, sexual behavior, abortion, and health care, and in the politics of the economy, the welfare state, education, defence, and the authority of the law. It is a consensus that has a particular attraction for feminists, because it exhibits the caring qualities said to be more typical of women than men, and because it has obvious relevance to bettering the social conditions of the oppressed, among which feminists count women as a differentiated class. "Sisters of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your domestic chores!" All too often the result of this kind of politicisation in science and philosophy has been that toleration does not extend to opposing beliefs and decisions. A particular kind of liberal ethics and left-of-centre politics has become the postmodernist norm, and objections to this in specific cases of conflict are falsely held to be attacks upon the virtues of liberalism itself. An extreme example of this occurs in an article by Anne Seller subtitled "Toward a Politically Adequate Epistemology," in which the analysis of value-judgments in science is particularly clear and outspoken. Her conclusion is that the best way of reaching satisfactory interpretations of experience is through open conversation within some human community, in her case "women's consciousness-raising groups". (Seller, 1988) Her description of rational understanding and decision reached through such conversation approximates the accounts of Gadamer, Habermas and Rorty, though with greater sensitivity to potential male/female conflicts. But these women's groups presumably contain no males, and are far too narrowly conceived for the important epistemological role Seller makes them play. She asks the question "what can I say about those who fundamentally disagree with me?", and concludes that if it is impossible "to persuade them to change their ways," and if, like "Nazis and sexists" they assume "that some people are not persons," "they make it impossible to the majority of us to live with them.... We are communities in a state of war," at least a war of subversion if not violence. (Seller, 1988) Feminists have rightly been more frank about the necessity of such subordination than most other postmodern epistemologists. To recognise this necessity is, however, to spell the end of epistemology as traditionally conceived. The answer to the query whether we require a new epistemology of principles is that epistemology itself desires to be redefined. There is no worldwide, perennial, description of how we recognize, just as there is no lone account of method in the sciences, or a single, static set of objectives which usual and human sciences should follow throughout history. Epistemology has to turn into a critical discipline, enlightening the presuppositions of the way accessible debates are hold in all forms of discourse, unmasking bias, disagreement and illogicality, and doing this within superseding value-systems upon which local agreement may be open to discussion. Conclusion It is not that philosophy and epistemology are independent of natural human differences, but that male/female differences are not necessarily the most crucial of these in all contexts. Indeed, as many feminists would agree, moral and political differences within and about science are often much more salient, crossing many other intellectual and biological boundaries. In a democratic state with many crisscrossing interests, there cannot and should not be a specific feminine politics, and therefore no specific feminine science or epistemology either. References Dancy, J. (1985). An introduction to contemporary epistemology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Feyerabend, Paul (1975) Against Method. London: New Left Books. Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1975). Truth and Method (London: Sheed & Ward,), p. 273ff. Helman, D. (ed.) (1988) Analogical Reasoning (Dordrecht: Kluwer,), pp. 317-40 Kuhn, Thomas S. (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Raven, D. et al. (1992). Cognitive Relativism and Social Science (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers,). Rorty Richard, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), p. 389ff. Scheler, Max. (1992) 'Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge', pp. 166-200 in Harold J. Seller Anne. (1988). "Realism versus Relativism: Towards a Politically Adequate Epistemology," in Morwenna Griffiths and Margaret Whitford (eds.), Feminist Perspectives in Philosophy (London: Macmillan Press, p. 179. Sokal, A., and Brickmont, J. (1998) Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science. Picador, 300 pp. (Published in the UK as Intellectual Impostures.) Read More