Relativism in Contemporary American Philosophy: MacIntyre, Putnam, and Rorty

Relativism in Contemporary American Philosophy TIMOTHY MOSTELLER Continuum RELATIVISM IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN PHILO...

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Relativism in Contemporary American Philosophy

TIMOTHY MOSTELLER

Continuum

RELATIVISM IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY

Continuum Studies in American Philosophy

Dorothy G. Rogers, America's First Women Philosophers Thorn Brooks and Fabian Freyerhagen (eds), The Legacy of John Rawls James Marcum, Thomas Kuhn's Revolution Joshua Rust, John Searle and the Construction of Social Reality Eve Gaudet, Quine on Meaning Douglas McDermid, The Varieties of Pragmatism

RELATIVISM IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY

TIMOTHY MOSTELLER

continuum

Continuum International Publishing Group The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane 11 York Road Suite 704 London SE1 7NX New York, NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com

© Timothy Mosteller 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Timothy Mosteller has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 0-8264-8636-3 (hardback)

Typeset by BookEns Ltd, Royston, Herts. Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd., Bodmin, Cornwall

Dedication

To Angela with Love

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without the patient, dedicated guidance of Harvey Siegel. I am also very grateful to Dallas Willard, J. P. Moreland, Doug Geivett and Susan Haack for their significant influence in my thinking about epistemology and the role of philosophy in well-being and well-doing.

Contents

1 Epistemological Relativism Articulated Introduction Relativism: general statement The difficulties with ER Summary

2 5 15

2 Recent Attempts to Generate A Non-problematic ER Introduction Meiland: "No transcendence, therefore relativism" Devine: "No neutrality, therefore relativism" Swoyer: "No common world, therefore relativism" Stich: "No cognitive norms, therefore relativism" Summary

17 17 21 26 32 35 40

3 Relativistic Tensions in MacIntyre's Epistemology Introduction: three key features of MacIntyre's epistemology Rationality within traditions Defeating traditions Putnam and Rorty on MacIntyre's relativistic tensions

45 45

4 Relativistic Tensions in Putnam's Epistemology Introduction Rejection of relativism Relativistic tensions in Putnam's epistemology MacIntyre and Rorty on Putnam's relativistic tensions Conclusion

77 77 78 95 109 114

5 Relativistic Tensions in Rorty's "Epistemology" Introduction

124 124

1 1

47 57 63

viii


Rorty's views on epistemology Rorty's views on epistemology and ER MacIntyre and Putnam on Rorty's relativistic tensions Conclusion

124 135 141 148

6 Toward an ER-Free Epistemology Introduction The standards conjunct as a necessary condition for epistemology Rejecting the no neutrality conjunct Accepting local neutrality Conclusion

155 155 156

Bibliography Index

182 191

160 161 176

Chapter 1

Epistemoloffical Relativism Articulated

Introduction

Epistemological relativism has been with us from the beginning of Western philosophy. It is a powerful idea that has attracted the admiration and scorn of philosophers throughout the ages. This is no less true in twentieth-century American philosophy. This work is a critical study of epistemological relativism in the works of and the debates between three contemporary American philosophers: Alasdair MacIntyre, Hilary Putnam and Richard Rorty. These three intellectuals have contributed greatly to the discussion of the role that relativism should or should not play in an overall account of knowledge. In order to evaluate Maclntyre, Putnam and Rorty's epistemologies and their views on epistemological relativism, I will first argue that epistemological relativism, toward which these epistemologies tend, fails. This first chapter begins with a clarification of epistemological relativism and its difficulties. This chapter will be followed in the second chapter by a critical account of four recent attempts to overcome those difficulties. I will argue that these attempts fail. In Chapters 3, 4 and 5 I will present an exposition of the presence of epistemological relativism in the major works of Maclntyre, Putnam and Rorty, and I will examine the three-way debate between these thinkers regarding the presence of epistemological relativism in their works. In Chapter 6, I conclude with an account of how a coherent epistemology can be constructed that is free from the difficulties of epistemological relativism.

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Relativism: general statement

What is relativism? In developing a general statement of what relativism is, it may be useful to examine several recent definitions of relativism. Consider the following: "Any doctrine could be called relativism which holds that something exists, or has certain properties or features, or is true or in some sense obtains, not simply but only in relation to something else" (Lacey, 1986, p. 206). This definition is too broad. Its broadness lies in the phrase "only in relation to something else." For example, philosophers who maintain some kind of correspondence theory of truth might claim that a proposition p is true in virtue of the relation that p has to a fact J\ p is true only in relation to f. A theistic philosopher might argue that the universe exists and has the properties it has "only in relation to" the mind of God. This definition will not work since "only in relation to" includes, in the two examples just presented, alethic and ontological dependence (which is a relation of something with something else) in the definition. But this is not what is ordinarily meant by advocates of relativism. There are only certain kinds of relations that result in relativism. Other definitions are too narrow. For example: "Relativism [is] the denial that there are certain kinds of universal truths" (Pojman, 1995, p. 690). This definition puts an epistemic premium on what relativism is, but not all forms of relativism need to have epistemic elements—although all forms of relativism have epistemic implications. Ontological relativism, according to which the existence and/ or nature of some entity x is relative to language(s), concepts, etc., does not seem to have an epistemic element to it. However, it seems to have epistemic implications in that if the existence and/or nature of an entity x, is relative to language, then knowing that x exists and exists as such, will be dependent upon what x is like which is dependent upon language, concepts or whatever. 1 Let me propose the following definition of relativism which is broad enough to encompass a wide variety of relativism and narrow enough to exclude other varieties:

Epistemological Relativism Articulated

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Relativism = df: the nature and existence of items of knowledge, qualities, values or logical entities non-trivially obtain their natures and/or existence from certain aspects of human activity, including, but not limited to beliefs, cultures, languages, etc. Epistemological Relativism (ER)

Throughout this work, I will be using Harvey Siegel's definition of epistemological relativism as a starting point for evaluation of Maclntyre's, Putnam's, and Rorty's epistemologies. Siegel defines epistemological relativism in the following two-part fashion. First, there is a "standards" conjunct which states: For any knowledge claim p, p can be evaluated (assessed, established, etc.) only according to (with reference to) one or another set of background principles and standards of evaluation Sj, . . . S n .

Second, there is a "no neutrality" conjunct which states: and, given a different set (or sets) of background principles and standards s/, . . . sn', there is no neutral (that is, neutral with respect to the two (or more) alternative sets of principles and standards) way of choosing between the two (or more) alternative sets in evaluating p with respect to truth or rational justification. jfr's truth and rational justifiability are relative to the standards used in evaluating/? (Siegel, 1987, p. 6). The key element of Siegel's definition is the notion of there being no neutral (i.e. non-question begging) standard (s) by means of which to determine the "truth or rational justification" of any knowledge claim. Siegel's definition is particularly helpful in that it does not specify any particular standard, but leaves room for the application of any standard whatsoever. Other contemporary definitions of relativism recognize this dual aspect of relativism: the relevance of "standards" and the absence of

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epistemic "neutrality."2 Relying on Siegel (1987), Harre and Krausz state that a "strong form of epistemic relativism" would be one in which one holds to the assumption that "there could be no overarching set of evaluative standards by which each person's evaluative standards could be ranked with respect to its knowledge engendering power" (Harre and Krausz, 1996, p. 75). They state that this could be made stronger by adding the "further condition that along with each set of evaluative standards there is a different set of background beliefs" or "epistemic frameworks" (p. 75). Similarly, Bayley's description captures the standards aspect. He states, "Relativism is usually understood as the claim that standards, rules, principles, ideals . . . for acceptability of a belief lack validity outside some limited, statable context" (Bayley, 1992, p. 2). Like Siegel, Harre and Krausz also recognize the "no neutrality" aspect of relativism. The notion of "no neutrality" is alluded to when Harre and Krausz state that according to relativism "there will be many distinct, irreducible knowledge corpora" (Harre and Krausz, 1996, p. 75). The key emphasis here is on "many" and "irreducible." Since no knowledge "corpus" is reducible to another, presumably this means that there is no neutral way in which epistemic standards can be reduced to another. Thus, there is no neutral way in which they can themselves be evaluated: "There are independent and irreducible thought-styles, sets of absolute presuppositions, paradigms, narrative conventions and so on" (p. 94) also called "conceptual schemes" (p. 75). 3 Similarly, Gifford recognizes the no neutrality conjunct. He indicates the importance of recognizing that the epistemological relativist rejects any overarching criteria by means of which one can adjudicate between competing or contradictory truth claims. "The relativist . . . will deny that we can ever offer a single criterion by which we can determine the 'rightness' of what . . . we know will vary with the unique features of a person or of a context or of a culture" (Gifford, 1983, p. x). The importance of this dual-aspect nature of relativism will be evident throughout this work. In Chapters 3—5, key features of the epistemological views of Maclntyre, Putnam and Rorty will be


5

examined. Each of these philosophers maintain that epistemic evaluation can only occur through the use of standards of evaluation which are relative to traditions (Maclntyre), conceptual schemes (Putnam), and ethne (Rorty), and each philosopher agrees that there can be no neutrality between competing standards of epistemic evaluation. However, these philosophers maintain that this does not lead to relativism. The difficulty for these philosophers is to avoid epistemological relativism while maintaining that there can be no neutrality between competing epistemic standards of evaluation. Before proceeding to an evaluation of those views, I turn now to an examination of the difficulties with epistemological relativism (henceforth, ER).

The difficulties with ER ER is self-defeating

From the history of philosophy, it appears that the first articulation of a relativistic view of knowledge was given by Protagoras in his work Truth, now lost but most widely known through Plato's presentation of it in the Theaetetus.^ What exactly is Protagorean relativism? Protagorean relativism is a species of the general formulation of epistemological relativism given above. It is simply the view that "things are for every man what they seem to him to be" (Plato, 1997, p. 189, line 170a). Siegel claims, Protagoras' view is an extreme version of relativism: knowledge and truth are relative to the person contemplating the proposition in question, p is true (for me) if it so seems; false (for me) if it so seems. Since the final arbiter of truth and knowledge is the individual, Protagoras' view denies the existence of any standard or criterion higher than the individual by which claims to truth and knowledge can be adjudicated (Siegel, 1987, p. 4). Harre and Krausz also recognize that Protagorean relativism is extreme in its formulation. Part of what makes Protagorean

6


relativism extreme lies in its claim that knowledge is relative to the individual. Harre and Krausz concur with Siegel when they state, Protagorean relativism is an extreme form of truth relativism. It is extreme in the sense that it makes the truth or warranted assertibility of propositions relative to individual persons on unique occasions. This is a most implausible doctrine, in that we could hardly imagine a coherent form of life developing in such circumstances. But there are other varieties of epistemic relativism which are not so easily dismissed. One could concede the possibility that a very general relativism holds among large scale belief systems without embracing extreme Protagorean individualism (Harre and Krausz, 1996, pp. 73—4). As Harre and Krausz recognize, its extreme individualism (among other of its features) makes Protagorean relativism problematic.5 It is interesting to note that the three philosophers whose work I will investigate have each indicated that the kind of relativism that Protagoras held is problematic.6 Maclntyre, Putnam and Rorty claim that their epistemological views avoid this kind of extreme Protagorean relativism, but they do claim that relativism can provide insights into epistemology that are "not so easily dismissed." These philosophers maintain that knowledge involves some sort of communal activity, culture, or peer group. Whether this way out of the individualistic nature of Protagorean relativism is successful remains to be seen. I will argue that even though these philosophers do not hold to Protagorean relativism, their epistemologies do have aspects which appear relativistic, as epistemological relativism is defined by Siegel above. Siegel draws out two arguments from Socrates' criticisms of ER in the Theaetetus, both of which apply not only to Protagorean relativism, but to ER as it is defined above. First, there is the argument that "necessarily some beliefs are false" (the NSBF argument) (Siegel, 1987, p. 6). This argument can be summarized as follows: 1. If there is a standard by which ER is judged to be false, then ER is false.


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2. There is a standard by which ER is judged to be false. 3. Therefore, ER is false. What is the relativist to make of this argument? In order to avoid this conclusion, the relativist must show that premise 1 is false. In order to deny premise 1, the relativist must deny that the falsity of ER follows from its being judged to be false, but this is impossible for the relativist, since on the very nature of the definition of relativism, all propositions (including ER) are true or false just in case they are judged to be so. To deny premise 1, the relativist must deny the very thing asserted in the definition of ER, namely, that truth/falsity is relative to standards. So, the relativist in maintaining that ER is true must allow that ER is false, if a standard judges it to be so. Maria Baghramian claims that the NSBF argument is problematic because it fails to "distinguish between agent-relativism and context-relativism" (Baghramian, 2004, p. 133), where the former is simply a form of subjectivism, while the latter "provides for an agent-independent or what may be called a 'context-relative' criterion of truth and falsity" (p. 133). According to Baghramian, the NSBF argument doesn't apply to the context-relativist, because this type of relativist denies the the very distinction between being right simpliceter and being right according to the standards of evaluation of a particular context (e.g. cultural contexts). While this may make us "prisoners of our own culture" (p. 133), according to Baghramian, without further argument as to why this is a problem, the NSBF argument doesn't apply. Baghramian's distinction between agent and context-relativists doesn't militate against the NSBF argument. If we accept her distinction, we end up with two new arguments: NSBF-A: 1. If there is a standard held by an individual agent by which ER is judged to be false, then ER is false. 2. There is a standard held by an individual agent by which ER is judged to be false. 3. Therefore, ER is false.

8


NSBF-C: 1. If there is a standard in a particular context by one or more individuals by which ER is judged to be false, then ER is false. 2. There is a standard in a particular context by one or more individuals by which ER is judged to be false, then ER is false. 3. Therefore, ER is false. Both NSBF-A and NSBF-C claim that regardless of whether relativism takes the standards of epistemic evaluation to be relative to an agent's individual beliefs, or to a context in which an agent's beliefs are formed, as long as the relativist denies the possibility of neutrality between her context-relativism (or agent relativism) and the denial of her context-relativism, then necessarily, contextrelativism (or agent relativism) will be false. In addition to the NSBF argument, Siegel presents the argument that ER should be rejected because it "undermines the very notion of Tightness" (Siegel, 1987, p. 4), the UVNR argument. This argument can be summarized as follows: 1. "If ER is rationally justifiable, [then] there must be some nonrelative, neutral . . . framework or ground from which we can make that judgment [i.e. that ER is rationally justifiable]" (p. 4). 2. But according to the definition of ER there are no nonrelative, neutral frameworks or grounds. 3. Therefore, ER is not a rationally justifiable position. The relativist must take issue with premise 1 in this argument. The relativist must claim that it is true that ER is rationally justifiable and that it is false that a neutral framework is required. However, whatever rational justification that the relativist has for the affirmation of the antecedent and the denial of the consequent of premise 1, it cannot be a justification which is itself neutral, since the relativist is seeking to deny the possibility of any such neutrality. The very notion of the Tightness or truth of a proposition has been undermined in the very definition of relativism. Thus, if ER true, it would be false, since "there can be no neutral ground from which to


9

assess the rational justifiability of any claim, including ER itself (Siegel, 1987, p. 8). Using Siegel's understanding of ER, it is also possible to show that ER leads to a reductio ad absurdum. Consider the following: 1. If ER is a "rationally justifiable position," then "there are good reasons for holding ER" (Siegel, 1987, p. 8). 2. If there are good reasons for holding ER, then those good reasons are neutral (by definition of "good reason"). 3. According to the proponent of ER, it is not the case that those good reasons are neutral. 4. Therefore, according to the proponent of ER, there are not good reasons for holding ER. 5. Therefore, according to the proponent of ER, ER is not a rationally justifiable position. The focal point of this argument is the truth value of premise 2. The notion of neutrality required for this argument to work is one according to which the good reasons for holding to ER are neutral "with respect to the presuppositions of relativists and nonrelativists" (p. 8). The proponent of this argument simply maintains that if one is to hold to ER, then with respect to the debate as to whether to hold ER or not, if there are good reasons to hold ER, then those reasons must be neutral with respect to the debate between the relativist and the non-relativist. With respect to premise 2, the relativist must claim that it is false by claiming that there can be good reasons for holding ER and that those good reasons can be non-neutral (with respect to the debate between relativism and non-relativism). However, the reasons for the relativist's claim that good reasons can be non-neutral, will either be neutral (which means that relativism is given up), or they will be non-neutral. However, if they are non-neutral, then why should the denial of the consequent in premise 2 be accepted over the affirmation of the consequent? Certainly the non-relativist will be free to reject that denial. Siegel argues that "to defend relativism is to defend it non-relativistically, which is to give it up; to 'defend' it relativistically is not to defend it at all" (p. 9).

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There is some debate about whether or not the kind of criticism leveled by Siegel against ER (i.e. that relativism is incoherent because it is self-defeating) can apply to ER at all. Is there some sleight of hand going on here? Is the "refutation" of ER the refutation of a "straw man"? In the following chapter I will consider several recent attempts to develop ER so that it is immune to the objection of self-refutation. But for now, I would like to simply state two relativist rejoinders to the anti-relativist objection that ER is self-defeating followed by some responses on behalf of the antirelativist to those rejoinders. One way that a philosopher might deny that ER is self-defeating is presented by Harold Zellner. Zellner has argued that like the skeptic who "tries to convince us that the best use of reason leads to the conclusion that reason is unreliable" (Zellner, 1995, p. 289), the relativist simply tries "to show how using reason as though it were independent of culture or 'conceptual frameworks,' etc., leads to the opposite conclusion" (p. 289). However, Zellner's analogy of relativism to skepticism is a non-starter, because the relativist wants "to show" (to use Zellner's words) us something; i.e. to argue, to prove, to convince us of something. The relativist is arguing that argumentation (qua rational activity that leads to knowledge claims by means of which standards of evaluation can be applied) is impossible. Clearly this is self-defeating.7 A second rejoinder to the objection that ER is self-refuting stems from the claim that the anti-relativist plays fast and loose with the notion of truth in his criticism. For example, consider Jordan's claims that Socrates only shows that Protagoras' theory is selfdefeating or incoherent because Socrates: equivocates between two senses of "true," employing "true for ..." when the emphasis is on what Protagoras said, and employing "true" (irrespective of who believes what) when stating what he believes to be the fatal implication of "man is the measure." From "what seems true to anyone is true for him to whom it seems so, and some men regard the foregoing proposition as false," it follows only that that proposition is false for those to whom it seems so, not that it is false, period (Jordan, 1971, p. 15).


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Jordan's claim that it follows from Socrates' argument "only that that proposition is false for those to whom it seems so" is simply false. Here is why. All that one needs to do in order to show that it is false is ask the following simple question: For whom is it true "that that proposition is false for those to whom it seems so"? If the answer is "for any subject" then relativism is given up, and Socrates' criticism is successful in showing that relativism is self-refuting, contrary to Jordan's claim. In fact, Jordan seems to indicate that this would be Protagoras' answer. He states, "If I am Protagoras, I will ascribe to any proposition's denial of the status of being true for those who believe it" (p. 16). This appears to be a universal claim about the nature of truth for all believing subjects. However, the immediate question must be put to Jordan: what is the epistemic status of this claim itself? If Jordan answers, it is true simpliciter, then relativism is given up, and the charge of self-refutation stands. However, if Jordan, or Protagoras, were to answer that this claim is true "for me" then we no longer have an argument or an assertion of anything more than the relativist's personal belief that relativism is true. To make this move, according to Siegel, is to "fail to join the issue with the opponent of relativism; it is to fail to assert the correctness or cognitive superiority of relativism" (Siegel, 1987, p. 24). 8 While Jordan is mistaken that Socrates' version of the selfrefutation argument does not work against ER because it equivocates on "true," Jordan ultimately argues against ER. He does so by recognizing that the advocate of ER is making an assertion about something, and in doing so it shows that there must be some basis for the relativist's claims.9 ER and solipsism

The place of epistemological relativism in the epistemology of Hilary Putnam will be considered below. However, in this discussion of the general difficulties with ER, I would like to point the way towards a potential difficulty for ER, one that is raised by Putnam. Putnam's criticism begins with a consideration of how to make one version of relativism consistent with the charge that it is self-refuting.

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Putnam states that there is a way to generate a consistent relativism by constructing what Putnam calls "first-person" relativism. "If I am a relativist, and I define truth as to what / agree with, or as what I would agree with . .. then, as long as I continue to agree with my own definition of truth, the argument that my position . . . is self refuting, does not immediately arise" (Putnam, 1992a, p. 73). Putnam continues, "Solipsism has never been a popular philosophical position, and first-person relativism sounds dangerously close to solipsism. Indeed, it is not clear how it can avoid being solipsism" (p. 75). Relativism cannot avoid being solipsism, because If you and I are not the first-person relativist in question, then the truth about me and about you and about the friends and the spouse of the first-person relativist is, for the first-person relativist, simply a function of his or her own dispositions to believe. This is why first-person relativism sounds like thinly disguised solipsism. But it is hard to see why cultural relativism is any better off, in this respect. Is solipsism with a "we" any better than solipsism with an "I"? (p. 76). 10 The key notion that Putnam recognizes is that the first-person relativist will maintain that truths are "simply a function of his or her own dispositions to believe." Why is this similar to solipsism? Consider the following definition of solipsism: solipsism means literally "self alone", and less literally "I alone exist" or else "I alone am conscious", yielding in the first case a more idealist form of solipsism querying the existence of an independent material world, and in the second case a more materialist form allowing for the (possible) existence of a material world but again not countenancing the existence of other minds or centers of consciousness (Borst, 1992, p. 487). The solipsist will maintain that the only thing that exists is the self, and her thoughts. The first-person relativist, according to Putnam, is similar to the solipsist because the relativist makes what


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is true dependent on the existence and aspects of the consciousness of the relativist. The solipsist must say of herself that she alone exists and that these things that appear to be different than herself are nothing but her own thoughts. The first-person relativist who makes truth dependent on her own psychological states is in the same position as the solipsist. The first-person relativist might say that he is not denying that there are other minds, but that other minds do the same thing that he does; they also make truths to be functions of their dispositions to believe. However, this way out of solipsism is not open to the firstperson relativist. The first-person relativist, in making this claim, is simply saying that this truth too is a function of his disposition to believe it to be true." The first-person relativist has by Putnam's definition isolated himself from other minds. This kind of isolation is seen in another definition of solipsism, where solipsism is understood to be "the doctrine that there exists a first person perspective possessing privileged and irreducible characteristics, in virtue of which we stand in various kinds of isolation from any other persons or external things that may exist" (Vinci, 1995, p. 751). The key aspect of this definition is the "isolation" that the solipsist has from other persons. It is in this sense of solipsism as isolation from other minds that Burnyeat claims that if the relativist tries to escape the self-refuting claim that "every judgment is true for the person whose judgment it is" (p. 174), by replacing it with the "completely solipsistic claim" (p. 191), that it is only in the relativist's world that the relativist's claim is true for the relativist, then something is clearly amiss.12 Burnyeat indicates that even the relativist's claim must: link judgments to something else—the world . . . though for a relativist the world has to be relativised to each individual. To speak of how things appear to someone is to describe his state of mind, but to say that things are for him as they appear is to point beyond his state of mind to the way things actually are, not indeed in the world tout court (for Protagoras [i.e. the relativist] there is no such thing), but in the world as it is for him, in his world (Burnyeat, 1976, p. 181).

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Burnyeat claims that we can make no sense of the notion that there is a world that exists only for the relativist in which his claim is true. If the relativist does not maintain that his claim is "something we can all discuss and, possibly come to accept, but simply asserts solipsistically that he, for his part lives in a world in which this is so, then indeed there is no discussion with him" (p. 191). Thus, relativism which maintains that there is only the relativist's world, cannot even enter into discussion about the way the world is with any other inquirer. The relativist has isolated himself from any other mind(s), and this is similar to the position of the solipsist. Putnam's criticism against one kind of epistemological relativism, namely "first-person relativism" seems to point the direction to a very difficult problem for relativism: it leads to solipsism. But the question at hand is whether or not Putnam's claims that first-person relativism leads to solipsism can also be applied to ER, as it is defined in this work. Does ER lead to solipsism in the same way that first-person relativism leads to solipsism? There are two difficulties that might stand in the way of an application of Putnam's argument to ER. First, Putnam's firstperson relativism makes that which is true a function of what the relativist believes, and this is much different than ER which simply maintains that knowledge claims can only be evaluated with reference to certain standards of evaluation and that given competing standards there is no way of choosing one standard over another. If it can be shown that the standards of evaluation to which ER refers are in fact the same thing as that which determines what the relativist believes, then perhaps Putnam's argument might be applied to ER. But, this leads to a second difficulty in applying Putnam's argument to ER, namely that ER need not rely on the standards or beliefs of an individual, rather it could rely on the beliefs of a group of individuals. So, in order to make Putnam's argument count at this point, it must be shown that first-person relativism leads to ER and that a group understanding of ER is no different than the individual nature of Putnam's first-person relativism. It is clear that Putnam claims that it is hard to see why first-person solipsism is not different than "group" solipsism, but in order to make Putnam's


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argument count against ER, additional arguments are needed. For the purposes of this work, Putnam's argument simply represents an additional difficulty that ER may face.

Summary

In this chapter I have attempted first to present a clear statement of the essential features of ER. Second, I have indicated several difficulties with ER. The conclusions drawn from this chapter will be applied to the following chapters in order to consider whether or not Maclntyre, Putnam or Rorty hold to versions of epistemological relativism which are problematic in the ways in which ER is problematic. However, before proceeding to that project (the main focus of this work) I will now consider several recent attempts by advocates of ER to develop a version of ER that avoids the difficulties indicated in this chapter.

Notes

1. For an excellent discussion of the types of relativism and the distinctions between epistemic and ontological forms of relativism, see O'Grady, 2002. 2. Other philosophers (Baghramian, 2004, p. 1; Bennigson, 1999, p. 214) recognize the conjunctive features in this definition of relativism, i.e. dependence on standards of evaluation and a denial of neutrality between standards. She calls this relativism at its "most basic," but claims that it is too simple, as the term "relativism" has a very wide application. This is correct as far as it goes, but for the purposes of evaluating epistemic relativism, this "most basic" definition applies correctly. 3. It is the notion of "conceptual scheme" that Hilary Putnam uses in his formulation of the no neutrality conjunct; there are varying competing and conflicting "conceptual schemes." 4. See also Baghramian, 2004, pp. 21—36. Baghramian's treatment of the

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5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12.

Relativism in Contemporary American Philosophy history of relativism from antiquity to the twenty-first century is excellent, and deserves careful study. The problem is that it is self-defeating. Maclntyre states, "So we can learn from Socrates' encounter with the formulations of Protagoras in the Theaetetus that relativists must be careful not to allow themselves to be trapped into making some type of universal self-referential claim" (Maclntyre, 1987, p. 386). Putnam warns against falling "into the self-refuting relativism of Protagoras" (Putnam, 1990, p. 139). Similarly, Rorty claims, "If there were any relativists, they would, of course, be easy to refute. One would merely use some variety of the self-referential arguments Socrates used against Protagoras" (Rorty, 1982, p. 167). For a concise treatment of the connection between self-defeating relativism and skepticism, see Luper, 2004. See also Siegel, 1987, pp. 24—5 for additional criticism of Jordan's position. For additional formulations of the self-defeating difficulties with relativism, see Lockie, 2003. We might call this "group solipsism" or "sol-z«-ism." For the solipsist, the existence of all things is dependent on the mental states of the solipsist, but for the epistemological relativist, the truth about all things, including other minds, is dependent on the mental states of the relativist. Thus, ER is like solipsism, but in a weaker sense that it does not have a metaphysical commitment in which the existence of other things is dependent on the relativist's mind. Burnyeat is here considering Protagorean relativism which is somewhat different than Putnam's first-person relativism; the similarity between them is that there is some kind of isolation that occurs when relativism in either form is maintained.

Chapter 2

Recent Attempts to Generate A Non-problematic ER

Introduction

In this chapter I examine several attempts to develop a nonproblematic version of ER which attempt to get around the difficulties with ER presented in the previous chapter. I will argue that these attempts fail. Before considering these arguments, I will generalize three arguments that have relativism as their conclusions. Siegel (2003) discusses two arguments for ER, the "no neutrality, therefore relativism" and the "no transcendence, therefore relativism" arguments. The former begins with the assumption that there are no neutral standards between competing knowledge claims and concludes that knowledge claims are relative to whatever nonneutral framework from which that knowledge claim is made, and this argument runs as follows: i. ii.

iii.

There are no neutral standards by appeal to which competing knowledge claims can be adjudicated. If there are no neutral standards by appeal to which competing knowledge claims can be adjudicated, then ER obtains. Therefore, ER obtains.

The key premise of this argument is premise i. Is premise i true? According to Siegel, the relativist's use of this premise hinges on an ambiguity in the idea that there is no neutrality between competing knowledge claims. It may be the case that for any two competing knowledge claims there may not be neutral standards. There may

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be no neutral standards which are "neutral with respect for all possible disputes. There may nevertheless be standards which . . . are neutral in the weaker sense that they do not unfairly prejudice any particular, live (at a time) dispute" (Siegel, 2003). Perhaps we can make the distinction between "local" and "global" neutrality. While it may be the case that there is no global neutrality, that is neutrality that applies to all epistemic disputes, for any particular dispute, there may be local standards to which we can appeal, standards which do not prejudice either one of the contestants in a particular dispute. So, premise i could be disambiguated into the following: i'. i".

There are no globally neutral standards by appeal to which competing knowledge claims can be adjudicated. There are no locallyneutral standards by appeal to which competing knowledge claims can be adjudicated.

If the relativist maintains i', the anti-relativist can allow this premise while maintaining that relativism does not follow, since it may be possible to maintain that there may be local neutrality, but what if the relativist maintains i"? Does relativism follow from the no neutrality argument listed above? Siegel offers two reasons to think that it does not. First, Siegel argues that the first premise is false. He states, "we have as yet no reason to think that the weaker form of neutrality [local neutrality] required for the avoidance of relativism in any given [local] case cannot be had" (p. 13). In addition, Siegel points out that there are in fact locally neutral standards by means of which one can evaluate competing knowledge claims. For example, although there may be competing standards of evaluation for a particular knowledge claim, there often are some standards which are considered to be locally neutral by those parties that are making those claims, and the laws of logic often function as such locally neutral standards. However, the laws of logic themselves need not always be locally neutral, since knowledge claims about them may also be disputed. In cases where the laws of logic are being considered as true or false, one cannot appeal to the laws of logic as locally neutral arbiters in the dispute.


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There may in fact be competing knowledge claims about the laws of logic, in which case the laws of logic cannot function as a locally neutral standard. However, suppose that the relativist gives very persuasive reasons to think that local neutrality cannot be had. Does relativism follow? The answer is no, and this is the second reason that Siegel offers to think that relativism as a conclusion of the "no neutrality, therefore relativism" argument fails. The relativist's claim that there is no such thing as local neutrality, is either itself a neutral claim, or it is not. If it is a locally neutral claim, then the claim is false, because it claims that there is no local neutrality. If it is not locally neutral, then there cannot be any persuasive, that is non-neutrally persuasive reasons for asserting it, and therefore it is ineffective in argumentation for the conclusion of ER, which it seeks to establish. In addition to the "no neutrality, therefore relativism" argument, Siegel presents a second argument, often used by defenders of ER, the "no transcendence, therefore relativism" argument. This argument runs as follows: i*.

One cannot transcend one's perspective (framework/ paradigm/culture). ii*. If one cannot transcend one's perspective, then ER obtains, iii*. Therefore, ER obtains.

In a way similar to that in the "no neutrality" argument above, the "no transcendence" argument hinges on an ambiguity in premise i. Siegel argues that i might be disambiguated by making a distinction between global and local perspectives.1 i*'. One cannot globally transcend all perspectives, i*". One cannot locally transcend "any given perspective" (Siegel, 2000, p. 28). The anti-relativist can agree with the relativist if the relativist maintains i*'. The anti-relativist can deny ER, and also maintain that for any given claim made within a perspective, it may be the case that there is no global transcendence (i.e. no perspectiveless

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perspective). The anti-relativist would add, however, that there are still local perspectives which can be transcended. Does ER follow if the relativist maintains i*"? Are there counter examples which show that there do in fact exist cases of local transcendence? Siegel provides commonsense evidence that shows that it is quite common to transcend locally any particular perspective (and to improve that perspective) without global transcendence. These examples include the psychological development of children transcending their local perspective of not being able to grasp the concept of fractions, locally transcending the perspective that there are not things which cannot be seen with the naked eye, and locally transcending the perspective that women should be treated as mere objects. In each case the person in the first local perspective, simply moved into an improved perspective. These examples show that although "epistemic agents always judge from some perspective or other . . . there is no reason to think that they are trapped in or bound by their perspectives such that they cannot subject them to critical scrutiny" (p. 17). Therefore, the "no transcendence, therefore relativism" argument fails and ER does not follow. I would like to add a third form of argumentation for relativism. It is what I shall call, the "no common world, therefore relativism" argument. It has two main features: i) the properties of objects in the world depend upon our conceptual schemes and ii) since different conceptual schemes represent different worlds, our knowledge of those worlds is relative to our conceptual schemes. However, as I will argue below, Swoyer's formulation of this argument (which I believe is also found in Putnam's epistemology) is fatally flawed. The main reason, as will be shown below, is that conceptual schemes/frameworks themselves are part of the world, and therefore must have determinate properties and be objectively non-relativistically knowable by us or not. If they are objectively knowable, then relativism is given up; if they are not objectively knowable, then no claim can be made as to how they allow us to represent different worlds.


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Meiland: "No transcendence, therefore relativism"

In this section, I intend to argue that J. W. Meiland's rejoinder in his article "Concepts of Relative Truth" (Meiland, 1977) to Edmund Husserl's objections to relativism in his Logical Investigations, fails. In that work, Husserl argues against the notion that an absence of transcendence between competing standards of epistemic evaluation leads to relativism. Meiland takes issue with Husserl's objections to relativism, in favor of a position which concludes that there is no transcendence with respect to competing conceptual schemes within which knowledge claims are made, therefore relativism follows. I will first state what Meiland understands Husserl's objection to relativism to be. Second, I will indicate what Meiland's rejoinder on behalf of the relativist is. Third, I will indicate why this rejoinder fails to defeat Husserl's initial objection. Meiland's understanding of Husserl's objection to relativism

Husserl's main objection to relativism, according to Meiland, centers around his arguments for the idea that "the notion of relative truth must contain or otherwise commit its user to the notion of absolute truth" (Meiland, p. 573), and the relativist's failure to notice this causes the relativist's claims to result in various contradictions. Husserl's concern in discussing relativism at the beginning of the Logical Investigations is to criticize psychologism, the view that "the essential theoretical foundations of logic lie in psychology" (Husserl, 1970, p. 90). Husserl claims that psychologism is a specific instance of relativism in general, and he argues that his criticism of psychologism, with the appropriate changes, will amount to a criticism of relativism in general. Husserl begins his discussion and criticism of relativism by focusing specifically on anthropologism, the relativistic view that "Man as such is the measure of all human truth [in which] [ejvery judgement whose roots are to be found in what is specificto man, in the constitutive laws of man as species—is a true judgement for us

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human beings" (p. 138). Anthropologism is a species of relativism in which "all truth has its source in our common human constitution" (p. 142). This form of relativism can generate a contradiction. For example, suppose that the relativist maintains that the judgment "there is no constitution of the human species" (p. 575) is true because of the basis of the constitution of the human species. This is a clear example of how one species of epistemological relativism is self-defeating. It may be argued that this kind of objection only applies to cases of relativism in which truth is relative to the constitution of the human species. However, even the general statement of ER given by Siegel can still be used to show what kind of contradiction could occur for the relativist. Suppose the relativist maintains that the knowledge claim that there are no standards to evaluate knowledge claims is true, and it is true because of the standards that the relativist herself has. This is certainly a contradiction that the relativist might face. Husserl makes this kind of contradiction explicit in his criticism of relativism in general, which he develops from his criticisms of these specific instances of relativism (anthropologism and psychologism). Husserl thinks that if there are any things which are not relativistic, the laws of logic would be good candidates. He argues that if some feature of human existence is picked out as the determinant measure of truth (i.e. the standards in Siegel's "standards" conjunct), then the laws of logic are going to be grounded in some contingent fact. But if the laws of logic are grounded in contingent fact, then any logical proof to the conclusion that some feature of human existence is that which determines truth, will itself be only merely contingent. The relativist uses logical laws in an absolute (non-contingent) sense to argue that there are no truths in an absolute sense, but only in a relative sense (pp. 144—5). This is roughly what Husserl has in mind when he begins his consideration of relativism by stating, "The worst objection that can be made to a theory, and particularly to a theory of logic, is that it goes against the self-evident conditions for the possibility of a theory in general" (p. 135). One of the putatively selfevident conditions for the possibility of a theory is that there are logical laws by means of which one can prove that theory to be true.


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Yet, the relativist seems to be using non-relative logical laws to prove that truth is relative. Husserl's main point is that any relativistic claim in which truth is relative to the constitution, or any other feature (including epistemic standards) of the human species, involves itself in a contradiction. Husserl claims that there is a deep connection between truth and the existence of the world, where "world" includes anything that exists, including logical truths. He states, "The relativity of truth entails the relativity of cosmic existence" (p. 143). The relativist's claim that truth is relative to the human species implies the relativity of the nature/structure/existence of the world to the human species. However, and this shows the absurdity of the view, the human species is itself a part of the world. Husserl makes this argument explicit when he states: The relativity of truth entails the relativity of the world's existence. For the world is nothing other than the unified objective totality corresponding to, and inseparable from the ideal system of all factual truth. One cannot subjectivize truth, and allow its object (which exists only provided that truth subsists) to count as absolutely existent (in itself). There would therefore be no world in itself, but only a world for us, or for any other chance species being. This . . . becomes dubious once we point out that the ego and its conscious contents [i.e. epistemic contents which function as standards] also pertains to the world (p. 143).2 If Husserl's argument to the non-relativity of the world is sound, then alethic relativism which makes truth relative to any feature of the human species cannot get off the ground. Husserl's argument is slightly different than the arguments presented above from Plato and Siegel. Husserl's argument shows that there is a contradiction in saying that truth is relative to some feature of human existence, while at the same lime saying that this feature of human existence is not itself relative to anything else. As soon as one makes truth relative, then the world becomes relative, but if the world is relative, then it is relative to one of its parts, which

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is not relative; this is where the contradiction and absurdity in the relativist's position lies. Like Plato, Husserl catches the relativist in a contradiction, but Husserl focuses slightly more on the metaphysical implications of relativism than does Plato. However, the contradiction remains for the relativist whether one considers the epistemic or metaphysical implications of her claims. Meiland's relativistic rejoinder to Husserl's objections to relativism

Meiland's rejoinder to Husserl's objection is based on the relativist's success in "explaining the notion of relative truth in such a way that it does not include the notion of absolute truth" (p. 571). According to Meiland, this notion of absolute truth would consist of a two-term relation between a truth bearer (sentence, proposition, statement, etc. . . . ) and a truth maker (fact, state of affairs, etc. . . . ) . The relativist, according to Meiland, must show that truth is not merely a two-term relation but is rather a three-term relation between truth maker, truth bearer, and "either persons, world views, or historical and cultural situations" (p. 571). Since truth involves this strong three-term relation, there is an impossibility of getting out of this relation in order to transcend the third term of the relation, and therefore relativism follows. Although Meiland does not present a full-blown argument that truth involves a three-term relation, he simply claims that the relativist might be able to develop fully such a view of truth. According to Meiland, if the relativist were successful, it would undermine the anti-relativist claim that truth does not involve the third term in the three-term relation. Thus, the relativist does not rely upon an absolute notion of truth in defending relativism. Why Meiland's rejoinder to Husserl's objection fails

Meiland fails to see that Husserl does have a good answer to his own rejoinder. Husserl offers a lengthy account of just how truth is essentially a two-term relation which transcends any third term.3 (Although, Husserl claims that truth can, but need not stand in a


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relation to the third term which Meiland takes as essential for truth.) Husserl claims that when making any analysis of the nature of truth there are three things which can enter into this analysis. There is i) the truth bearer (which according to Husserl is a proposition qua complex referential qualities/universals), ii) an object (or fact or state of affairs) instantiating the universals of the proposition, and iii) someone's particular thought\statement\sentence about the object. However, according to Husserl, truth is always correspondence between i and ii, and it is in this sense that truth is entirely independent of human cognition and therefore, not relative. Item iii in this list enters into consideration when a mind sees the relation between i and ii, or makes a truth claim about some particular proposition and its relation to some object. When S makes a claim which is in fact true, the relation between i and ii is instanced in iii.4 Husserl claims that truth is in many instances of iii, but is independent of all of them, and he argues that truth simpliciter is an Idea. 5 The following is an example of Husserl's positive claim of the non-relative, human cognition independent, Ideal nature of truth: Truth . . . is "eternal", or better put, it is an Idea, and so beyond time. It makes no sense to give truth a date in time, nor a duration which extends throughout time. Naturally one says of truth that on occasion it "comes to mind", and is accordingly "apprehended" or "experienced" by us. But such "apprehension", "experiencing" and "coming to consciousness", are spoken of in quite a different sense in relation to ideal being, from what they have in relation to empirical individualized being. We do not "apprehend" truth as we apprehend some empirical content which comes up, and again vanishes, in the stream of mental experiences: truth is not a phenomenon among phenomena, but is the experience on that totally different sense in which a universal, an idea, is an experience. We are conscious of truth, as we are in general conscious of a Species, e.g. of "the" Colour Red (Husserl, 1970, p. 148). In addition, Husserl argues that for any statement, "it is the truth

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that...," even if there were no minds that could see this truth, or see the nature of truth in particular, "each truth, however, remains in itself what it is; it retains its ideal being: it does not hang somewhere in the void, but is a case of validity in the timeless realm of Ideas" (p. 149). Thus, an instance of truth can be understood as the adequation (the "fit") of thing and intellect, but truth itself is an ideal possibility of the adequation of thing and intellect and exists logically prior to any mind with which it might be instanced in an act of adequation. Thus, truth can be understood as a two-termed relation, not a three-termed relation. Thus, contrary to Meiland, the relativist does use an absolutist notion of truth in defending relativism, since truth is in fact a twoterm relation. Thus, Meiland's claim that he can "begin to show that Husserl . . . [makes] a great mistake by assuming that relative truth must be either nothing at all or else a variety of absolute truth" (Meiland, 1977, p. 572) fails, just in case Husserl is successful. Whether Husserl's defense of truth as a two-termed relation succeeds is another matter entirely and is beyond the scope of this work, but Husserl's account of truth as a transcendent two-term relation points the way to an understanding of how to defeat a "no transcendence, therefore relativism" argument.

Devine: "No neutrality, therefore relativism"

Philip E. Devine defends epistemological relativism, which he claims is the view "that reasoning is possible only given shared assumptions, and that there is a plurality of possible sets of assumptions between whose adherents no argument is possible" (Devine, 1984, p. 404). This understanding of ER is sufficiently similar to Siegel's, and it is clear that Devine is talking about ER. Devine does two things in his article. First, he offers two brief responses to two common rejections of relativism. Second, he presents and defends five theses of relativism, with emphasis on one in particular on which the others rest. In what follows I will offer objections to Devine's criticisms of anti-relativist arguments and


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then present reasons to think that the key thesis in Devine's understanding of relativism fails. First, Devine claims that the following argument against relativism fails: (1) The relativist is committed to treating all statements as elliptical—i.e., as containing a suppressed reference to the standards of some group. (2) And that commitment extends to statements about frameworks and the relationship between a framework and statements within it. So, (3) The relativist's attempt to make assertions of any sort will lead to an infinite regress . . . (4) In particular he will not be able to assert his own relativism (p. 408). Devine thinks that this argument fails because the relativist can reject premise (1). Devine claims, "Relativism as here presented does not assert that all statements are to be expanded to read, 'According to framework F,p.' On the contrary, the relativist asserts that all statements must be made within a framework, which need not be treated as part of the statement itself (p. 408). Devine's response is inadequate. First, the claim that "all statements must be made within a framework" appears to be a framework-independent statement, or a statement that is made outside of every framework. Second, if it is a statement that is within some particular framework, then it applies to every possible framework, and if it applies to every possible framework, then there is a framework that is independent of all frameworks. However, this is self-defeating if it is combined with the relativistic claim that frameworks are dependent on particular contingencies of particular groups of people. Third, Devine's claim is also selfdefeating if there is to be no rational adjudication between competing truth statements. If someone claims that truth claims are not made within frameworks (i.e. that frameworks as such do not exist), then even though this person does not think that frameworks exist, the relativist must claim that from within that person's

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framework, frameworks do not exist. Clearly this is a contradiction, and is absurd. Devine also claims, "Some critics of relativism have argued that a relativist cannot maintain the usual sense of 'true,' . . . while admitting that positions other than his own are, from some equally valid point of view, true" (p. 408). Devine dismisses this objection to relativism by indicating that the relativist will simply allow there to be other frameworks that use "true" differently, but analogously to his own, "and that no rational argument is available to show that his own (or his opponent's) position is true or preferable" (p. 408). Devine has misconstrued the objection made by the anti-relativist. The anti-relativist does not simply think that it is problematic that positions other than his own might not be true in some other framework. Rather, the anti-relativist claims that the affirmation of a proposition within one framework cannot be true at the same time as the denial of the same proposition within another framework. The anti-relativist is simply trying to maintain the principle of noncontradiction. More will be said on this below, since Devine seems to maintain that the principle of non-contradiction is unimportant. For now, let us consider Devine's presentation of five theses on which he claims relativism rests: (z)

Whenever someone makes an assertion, he presupposes some standard, according to which his assertion is to be judged true or false, and on which its intelligibility depends. (z'z) People have employed incompatible standards in making assertions about the same subject matter. (z'z'z') Sometimes these differences of standards are ultimate. That is to say, there is sometimes no further standard to which appeal can be made in order to determine which of the rival standards is correct. (iv) Where the condition described in (z'z'z) obtains, it is nonsense to speak of one set of standards as correct. Such fundamental standards can only be described. (v) Hence, a decision to accept or reject some fundamental standard, to the extent that it lies within human power, must of necessity be arbitrary (p. 409).


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Devine claims that whether or not relativism is true depends on the truth of (Hi).Devine recognizes that central to relativism is the notion of "no neutrality" (i.e. the impossibility of adjudicating between competing standards of evaluation of knowledge claims). The most interesting thing that Devine claims about (in) (and this brings us back to the consideration of the principle of noncontradiction) is that neither (Hi) "nor its negation can be established directly by philosophical argument" (p. 411). Since Devine maintains that neither (Hi) nor ~(iii) can be established through argumentation, then the question arises regarding the standards by means of which the truth of (Hi)or ~(Hi)are to be established. If they are both on the same epistemic footing, then one wonders why one should accept (Hi) over ~(m), as the relativist desires. There are at least three ways of understanding what Devine means when he says that there is no way of establishing (Hi).First, Devine could mean that there is no evidence for (Hi) or ~(Hi). If Devine means this, then we are simply faced with an epistemological question, but it need not lead to relativism in the strong sense that there are no such standards, or that such standards are per se impossible. If this is what Devine means, then (Hi) cannot be used in establishing ER, since ER requires something like (Hi)to be established. Second, Devine could also mean that this thesis and its negation are true. It is clear that Devine maintains that the principle of noncontradiction is not epistemically normative, that is that the principle of non-contradiction alone need not mean that we must choose between (Hi) or ~(ra), in cases where (Hi) or ~(iii) cannot be established. Devine claims that the principle of non-contradiction cannot function as the point by means of which rival standards are adjudicated. He seems to indicate that the principle of noncontradiction is impotent in determining whether or not we should hold (Hi) or ~(m); he states, "rationality includes selective selfcontradiction" (p. 414) which can be pragmatically useful. Thus Devine concludes, "We may thus proceed in many practical contexts as if relativism were true" (p. 417). However, this conclusion need not trouble the anti-relativist. For example,

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relativism might be pragmatically useful, although false, in certain contexts. In a context in which one might wish not to hurt someone's feelings concerning a religious or aesthetic issue, one might, for the sake of family unity, simply grant that Grandma has her opinions and Uncle Bob has his. However, this need not mean that anything like ER is true, and so if this is what Devine has in mind, it does not amount to a very strong defense of ER. The difficulty that arises for Devine is that he is faced with the question of how to adjudicate between competing knowledge claims as to when precisely such "selective contradictions" are appropriate. For example, one person might claim that, given their epistemic position, practical context C is appropriate for utilizing "selective contradiction," and at the same time, another person might claim that, given their epistemic position, C is not an appropriate practical context for utilizing "selective contradictions." Thus, the question arises, what standard or criteria do these persons use to adjudicate between competing claims as to what counts as an appropriate practical context for utilizing "selective contradictions"? But, this is just the problem that (Hi) raises in the first place. It appears that Devine is trying to get around (Hi) by appealing to "practical contexts" as a standard for epistemic decision-making, but he cannot do this and consistently maintain (in). Thus, Devine's attempt to articulate a coherent epistemological relativism that rests on (Hi) fails. A third thing that Devine could mean is that it is impossible to establish the truth of (Hi) or ~(iii). If Devine were to maintain this, it would seem to give up relativism, since the relativist must maintain, in some sense that (Hi) is the right way to understand knowledge and ~ (Hi) is not. So, if this is what Devine means, nothing like ER has been established at all. What is asserted by (Hi)is itself a very interesting notion for relativism, especially for the philosophers whose works will be considered below. Does relativism follow from (Hi)? If one means by (Hi) that sometimes the differences between standards are such that it is epistemically impossible to get at some neutral standard to adjudicate the dispute, then (Hi) need not entail relativism. By "epistemically impossible," I simply mean that given the epistemic


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commitments of some particular group holding to certain standards, they lack the epistemic resources to access potential standards that do in fact exist between the two rival positions. However, Devine apparently means something stronger than this. He means that at times there can be no neutral standards between rival positions. The anti-relativist might respond to Devine by questioning the notion that it is impossible that for any given conflict between rival positions, there may be no neutral standard to adjudicate the conflict. The anti-relativist might simply suggest that, in principle, we can just go out and look at the way things are in order to determine which of the competing claims is right. For example, let us assume that two tribes on an island have competing claims about proposition p, where p is "the earth is round." Let us assume that tribe A maintains that/) is true based on their standards of evaluation, and tribe B maintains that p is false based on their standards. It would seem that the easiest way to determine which tribe is correct would be to voyage around the earth and see if it is round. "What the world is like" would constitute that to which one appeals and the "looking to see what it is like" would constitute the method used "in order to determine which of the rival standards is correct" (p. 409). The anti-relativist might ask Devine, why shouldn't we think that all cases of differences between standards are in principle similar to this example? If the anti-relativist is right about this, then Devine would need to present some reasons to think that there are cases where we cannot go out and look, but this would just make the problem an epistemic one of not being able to determine how to settle the question. It would not, however, mean that there are no ways to settle the question. Devine might respond by denying that reality is such that there are objective features of reality to which any neutral appeal can be made. But, considering the simple case of the roundness of the earth, it begins to seem rather strange to think that the world is in fact flat for tribe B and round for tribe A. This sounds similar to the point raised in the previous chapter by Burnyeat, that if someone is going to use relativism to create a world where things are true and real for him, but not for others, then it would seem impossible to even enter into a discussion with this person. This

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seems also to be a difficulty facing Devine's understanding of(Hi), and in turn for the argument that since there are no neutral standards, therefore relativism follows.

Swoyer: "No common world, therefore relativism"

Chris Swoyer in his article "True For" attempts to use the "No common world, therefore relativism" form of argumentation for relativism, while trying to avoid a slide into subjective idealism. Swoyer does not endorse ER, rather he is simply trying to be as charitable to ER as possible. Swoyer indicates that, "the very nature of the relativist's position makes it quite difficult for him to formulate coherently a claim to the effect that truth is relative" (Swoyer, 1982, pp. 85—6). Swoyer's task in this article is to formulate relativism in the most plausible way and to consider what follows from such a formulation. He focuses on the locution "true for" as the central concept used by the relativist to maintain that truth or knowledge is relative. However, Swoyer asserts that many relativistic positions use the locution "true for" (p. 94) not to relativize truth to individuals, but to conceptual frameworks. He attempts to "formulate [the notion] as plausibly as we can" (p. 96). He attempts to do this by considering "conditions of adequacy for an account of this notion" (p. 96). Swoyer attempts to paint relativism in the best light possible. Thus, he claims that the relativist must first advance "a thesis about the nature of, not the criteria for, truth" (p. 96). Second, the relativist ought not deny that there are things which are true apart from the beliefs of any particular individual and that there is a possibility of false beliefs. These are things that the relativist and the non-relativist have in common in their understanding of truth. However, Swoyer states, "the relativist and realist [non-relativist] part company over the question of whether some extra mental, extra-linguistic reality determines all truth" (p. 97). 6 Swoyer is quick to recognize that, in order to avoid a "slide into subjective idealism" (p. 97), the relativist must offer some account of


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what exactly the constraints are on "what can be true in a framework" (p. 97). Swoyer states that the relativist must, first, maintain that there is a concept-independent world which "provides the input which can be 'conceptualized' or 'organized' in a multiplicity of ways" (p. 97) by different frameworks. 7 The second thing which a relativist needs in order to avoid subjective idealism is what Swoyer calls "collateral commitments" which are features of one's noetic structure which allow additional truths to be added to that structure (e.g. commitments to the continuity of experience or commitments to "logical and evidential relations" (p. 97)). What does Swoyer's account of the most plausible version of relativism lead to? A lengthy quotation from Swoyer is in order: The picture we have thus far is one in which "the world," together with the central concepts and basic beliefs of a framework, somehow determine truth in that framework. We can see more clearly how this sort of picture often leads to a relativism with respect to truth if we recall the relativistic argument that our concepts, language, or the like somehow help to constitute the world as we know it ... [the relativist] must conclude that the only notion of the world that has significant content is that of the world as known and that this is in part literally created by the central concepts and basic beliefs we employ. Truth then has something to do with the world . . . with a world constituted by someone's mode of thought. In short, worlds are seen to be relative to frameworks; truth involves the (or a) world; hence, it too becomes relative. Using the notion of correspondence loosely, we can then view truth in [framework] F as correspondence to the facts of F's world; it remains a semantic notion, but it now involves a word-relativizedworld relation (p. 98). While Swoyer recognizes that this picture "is not lacking in difficulties," he indicates this is the "most plausible version of relativism" (p. 99). However, the upshot of truth as "a wordrelativized world relation" is that this strong version of relativism would maintain that some knowledge claim p could be true in

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framework F and false in another framework F'. However, Swoyer rightly points out that if "F and F' involve 'different worlds,' as a natural interpretation of the strong relativistic conception of truth requires, then how can a sentence of F mean, even roughly, the same thing as one in F? The problem is that the sentences of F and F' are about different things, and any move from F to F' seems simply to involve a change of subject" (p. 101). Thus, the difficulty with any version of relativism which makes features of the world, and thus our knowledge or truths about the world, dependent on conceptual schemes, cannot be a version of relativism which maintains that some truth or knowledge claim can be true in F and false in F'; after all, the subjects or referents in F are different than the referents in F'.8 There is no identity or sameness between the subjects or referents in F and F'. Swoyer's criticism points out the difficulty that the relativist faces when relying on the notion that the world "is in part literally created by the central concepts and basic beliefs we employ" (p. 98). However, there may be good reason to think that we should not grant the relativist the notion that the world is made by our concepts or consciousness or language or whatever. Why should we not think this? First, things (desks, people, cars) being what they are could not be produced (given their characteristics) by consciousness or language or concepts being what they are. This reason for doubting the relativist's ontological ground for her relativism must be carefully thought out by the relativist. The relativist must show exactly how our concepts or language do things or give properties to things in the world (apart from the trivial way in which our concepts guide us in making artifacts). The relativist owes some explanation of how exactly ordinary objects in the world are produced by the features of human nature to which the relativist appeals. This amounts to a criticism of any sort of epistemological relativism in which the relativist maintains that knowledge is relative to conceptual schemes where those conceptual schemes determine what the world is like.9 Second, and I think more fatally to this attempt by the relativist to ground epistemological relativism in ontological relativism, is the following: if things take their properties from language and/or


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consciousness, this will be because of, or due to, what language and consciousness are. Thus, language and consciousness will have a determinate "nature" or structure, knowledge and truths of which will not be, indeed cannot be, determined by language or consciousness upon pain of an infinite regress.10 While Swoyer attempts to make sense of the notion "true for" in such a way that it allows the relativist to have as strong a position as possible, it turns out that the strong notion of relativism in which a truth claim can be false in F and true in F' is incoherent. Its incoherence stems from the fact that there cannot be the same truth claims in F and F' since F and F' refer to, or have as their objects, entirely different worlds. In addition, I would add, any form of epistemological relativism which relies on an ontology in which the world or the properties of objects are determined by language or consciousness or human concepts, cannot be of service to the relativist and ultimately shows the incoherence of any form of epistemological relativism which relies on such an ontology.

Stich: "No cognitive norms, therefore relativism"

Epistemological relativism also appears to be defended by Stephen Stich in his The Fragmentation of Reason (Stich, 1990). In that work, Stich argues for what he calls "Normative cognitive pluralism . . . [which] is a claim about good cognitive processes—the cognitive processes that people ought to use. What it asserts is that there is no unique system of cognitive processes that people should use, because various systems of cognitive processes that are very different from each other may all be equally good" (p. 13). Normative cognitive pluralism (henceforth NCP) appears to be a version of ER since Stich's claims seem to fit the two-part definition of ER given above. First, Stich's defense of NCP fits the standards conjunct of Siegel's definition of ER. For example, Stich claims that cognitive activity can be evaluated only with respect to certain standards formulated by the person who is cognizing, namely her values, interests and goals. Stich states, "An account of cognitive evaluation is relativistic

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if the assessments of cognitive systems it offers are sensitive to facts about the person or group using the system" (p. 136). In addition, Stich's defense of NCP fits the no neutrality conjunct of Siegel's definition of ER. Stich states that the view that he defends is one in which "there is no unique system of cognitive processes that people should use, because various systems of cognitive processes that are very different from each other may all be equally good" (p. 13)." That is, those processes will be good relative to the standards that are used by those who have those processes. So, Stich seems to be affirming something very like ER. The question thus becomes, is NCP problematic as ER is? Stich claims that it is not. Stich claims that his views are relativistic, but he asks, "What's so bad about epistemic relativism?" (p. 135). Stich considers two charges against NCP, and he claims that neither charge counts against it. First, there is the charge that NCP as a version of ER is nihilistic and "gives up on the project of distinguishing good cognition from bad" (p. 141). Stich claims that this charge fails as a criticism of NCP. Stich holds that there can be cognitive evaluation, that does assess various competing, conflicting and disparate cognitive methods, but does so in a non-neutral fashion, within the constraints of the "no neutrality" conjunct in Siegel's definition of ER. On what basis will such an evaluation be made? A cognitive process can be evaluated only in terms of the interests that those who are cognizing have. That is, a good cognitive process will be one that realizes the goals and interests of those who are cognizing. Stich states, "In evaluating systems of cognitive processes, the system to be preferred is the one that would be most likely to achieve those things that are intrinsically valued by the person whose interests are relevant to the purposes of the evaluation" (p. 131). 12 So Stich is claiming that on his account of normative cognitive pluralism, not all cognitive processes will be equally good. He makes an analogy between cognitive processes and technologies. A technology is a good technology just in case it meets the goals and values of the person using the tool. Similarly, a cognitive process will be good just in case it meets the goals, values and interests of the persons who have the cognitive processes that they do. For any culture with values, V, a cognitive process, P, will be good just in


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case P satisfies/fulfills V for that culture. According to Stich, a culture with some value, V might have a cognitive process C', which does not meet V for C. In such a situation, C' will not be a good cognitive process.13 Cognitive process can be either good or bad, but only relative to the goals, interests and values of those who use them, and thus the charge that NCP is nihilistic fails. The second charge against NCP that Stich claims fails is the charge that it "threatens the connection between cognitive inquiry and truth" (p. 142). The relativist seems to be maintaining that "incommensurable systems of belief could possibly be true" (p. 144). Stich indicates that if someone wants to show that relativism is faulty at this point, they should challenge this relativist notion. The antirelativist would, grant that there may be systems of belief like cognitive states that are incommensurable with our beliefs—systems of mental sentences perhaps that are built from significantly different concepts and constructions. But, they would insist, the very fact that they are incommensurable entails that these cognitive states have no truth conditions, and thus they are neither true nor false (p. 144). While Stich indicates that additional argument is needed to shore up this anti-relativist claim, he is willing to grant that "some suitably elaborated version of the argument displayed above does in fact go through, and thus that if epistemic relativism is right, there is no hope of showing that good reasoning leads to the truth" (p. 144). However, Stich is "unfazed by this complaint" (p. 144) because he has supposedly shown in a previous part of his book that there is an enormous space of head-world relationships among which the one picked out by the socially transmitted, intuitively sanctioned notion of truth has no unique advantages. Apart from epistemic chauvinists, it is hard to see why any clearheaded person would care whether her beliefs were true—why would she prefer true beliefs to TRUE* ones, TRUE** ones, and so on.14 It is harder still to see why a clearheaded person would prefer

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Relativism in Contemporary American Philosophy cognitive processes that typically yield true beliefs over cognitive processes that are pragmatically sanctioned. For the latter in contrast with the former, have an obvious connection with what the person wants and values. So to the complaint that relativism would sever the connection between good cognition and truth, my answer is as follows. Perhaps that's right; perhaps it would. But this is no reason to worry about relativism unless we have some reason to want our beliefs to be true . . . Without some reason to prefer truth to the infinite variety of alternative headworld relationships, we should be no more concerned about the fact that good reasoning may not lead to truth than we are about the fact that good reasoning may not lead to TRUTH**** (p. 144).

Stich concludes, "There is no unique, intrinsically desirable headworld relationship to which all cognitive agents should aspire. And since there is no universally desirable endpoint of cognitive activity, there is no point in fretting over the fact that if relativism is right, good thinking won't get us there" (p. 145).15 Thus, Stich sidesteps the charge that relativism "threatens the connection between cognitive inquiry and truth" by denying that there is any normative connection between the two. For the sake of argument, I am going to assume that Stich's responses to these two objections to relativism are successful, but Stich's view is not off the hook. As has been shown above, the main problem with ER, is not that it might allow for an "anything goes" account of rationality or cognition, or that it might sever the link between cognition and truth. The main problem with ER is that it is self defeating. Stich does not consider this as an objection to his views, but let us put it to the test.16 It seems to me that Stich's view, in so far as it can be understood as a version of ER, is in fact, like ER, self-defeating. Stich makes it clear, as indicated above, that being a good cognitive process will be relative to the interests, values or goals of the person or persons who use that process.17 The problem for Stich is that his main thesis is itself normative, but the question becomes, normative for whom? If cognitive processes are good just in case they


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meet the interests, values or goals for the persons who have them, then a defense of NCP as the result of some particular cognitive process (remember there is an enormous space of various headworld relationships, and presumably NCP represents one of these relationships) will only be a good result if one has the interest, values or goals of the defender of NCP. If one has different interests, values or goals, then one need not accept NCP. So, NCP is only normative for those who have interests relevantly similar to those who find that NCP fulfills the interests, values or goals of their cognitive processes. NCP seems to fall prey to the argument raised by Siegel against ER, the "necessarily some beliefs are false" argument. If NCP is true, then on any account which does not have the interest, values and goals of the advocate of NCP, then NCP will be false. Thus, if NCP is true, NCP will be false. But perhaps this move is too fast, since Stich does seem to allow that there can be improvements in cognitive processes. Stich states that "The pragmatist is perfectly prepared to find that people in some other culture would be doing a better job of cognition if they were to replace their own cognitive processes with ours. But he is also prepared to find that people in another culture are doing quite a good job of cognition, given their goals and circumstances" (p. 141). It is important to note, however, that Stich is not making an absolutist, non-relative claim. What he means in this quotation is that people can do one of two things in order to do "good jobs of cognition." They can either change their cognitive processes to meet their goals, or change their goals to meet their cognitive processes, and Stich seems to indicate that either of these two strategies is fine. But isn't there something more important than just having cognitive processes which meet the interest, values or goals of the individuals that have them? The real question is whether or not there are good interests, values or goals that one should choose. Let us say that one has as one's goals the destruction of the human race; one's cognitive process will be rational just in case they further that goal more than other available processes. Any form of rationality, especially forms of practical rationality, will be good just in case they meet the goals, interests and values of those who have them. This would presumably include, but not be limited to, Nazi values, Klan

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values, Stalinesque values, human race annihilationist values, sexist values, racist values, etc. Aren't some goals or values intrinsically (epistemically or ethically) good or bad? Just how enormous should the variety of head-world relationships be, and still count as good relationships? Is there any pale beyond which one can go when assessing the values in terms of which the goodness of cognitive processes are determined? To repeat the difficulty, since Stich makes good rational cognitive processes just those that meet the goals, interests and values of those that have them, then one must accept as good those cognitive processes that value, what appears to be, at least intuitively, extremely (morally and epistemically) bad goals, values and interests.18 Although good cognitive systems are good just in case they meet the goals, interests and values of those who have them, Stich's account does not, and by its own light, cannot offer any normative reason for the acceptance or rejection of the goals, interests and values that are had by various cognizers. For this reason, and for the reason that NCP, the view Stich defends, appears to have the same difficulty as ER (i.e. both are self-defeating), Stich has not succeeded in demonstrating that there is nothing inherently problematic about relativism.

Summary

While it has not been shown that any future formulation of a putatively consistent epistemological relativism will necessarily fail, it has been shown that several recent attempts do fail. In what follows, I will examine the attempts made by Maclntyre, Putnam and Rorty to deny relativism, on the one hand, and show how a non-transcendent resolution of competing standards of evaluation of knowledge claims is possible, on the other. It is an examination of the relativistic tensions in those philosophers' works to which I now turn. 19


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Notes

1. While Siegel does not use the global/local terminology, it captures Siegel's points. 2. Dallas Willard in his study of Husserl's early views of logic and mathematics offers this insight into this passage: Husserl addressed himself... to a position which relativizes truth to existing minds or types thereof, and in so doing also relativizes the world. His argument is that truth cannot be relative to minds because the world is not, and that to relativize truth to minds would be to relativize the world to minds—whereas minds are themselves but products and parts of the world. The world would thus be relativized to entities that are among its parts (Willard, 1984, p. 237). 3. Husserl's notion of transcendence here is somewhat different than the use of transcendence in Siegel's consideration of the "no transcendence, therefore relativism argument." Siegel's argument focused on the possibility of standards of epistemic evaluation which are transcendent for any particular epistemic dispute. Husserl focuses on the metaphysical transcendence of the relationship between a truth bearer and a truth maker, a relationship which transcends any third term (e.g. conceptual schemes, world views, etc.). 4. In one of his earlier works, Husserl states, "truth is something Ideal, supra-temporal" (Husserl, 1994, p. 380). Dallas Willard, in his translator's introduction to Husserl's Early Writings in the Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics, indicates that according to Husserl, truth as correspondence amounts to a "relation between the Ideal constituents of acts of consciousness—propositions or judgments in the logical sense—and what those propositions are inherently about, regardless of whether or not they are ever actually thought by, or occur to, anyone" (Husserl, 1994, p. XLIV). 5. I understand Husserl to mean by Idea, and Species the same things as "Platonic form" or "universal." 6. Swoyer is using "realist" here in a non-standard sense. One might be a realist, about the external world, and still maintain ER. 7. Swoyer seems to be invoking some kind of "scheme/content" distinction, when in fact there may be no such thing. See Donald Davidson's "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme" in Davidson, 1984, and Siegel, 1987, pp. 38-44.

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8. See also Siegel, 1987, pp. 173-4, n. 46. 9. This line of criticism does not appear to apply to a relativist who rejects the notion that conceptual schemes determine the character of the world. 10. These two arguments apply directly to what Michael Levin calls "reality relativism: the thesis that the world has no mind-independent characteristics, i.e., that the characteristics the world does display depend upon human mental activity" (Levin, 1992, p. 69). 11. Stich makes the same point in several other places in his book: The account of cognitive virtue I have come to defend is floridly pluralistic. Moreover, it is relativistic as well, since it entails that different systems of reasoning may be normatively appropriate for different people (p. 14). The central point is that if the most sophisticated recent attempts to analyze our local notions of cognitive [evaluation] are even roughly on the right track, those notions occupy a small area in a large space of alternative concepts, and there is no obvious virtue that distinguishes our concepts [of cognitive evaluation] from the alternatives, apart from the fact that we happen to have inherited them (p. 94). 12. Stich makes the same point in several different places: [R]ather than looking at how high alternative systems of cognitive processes rank on some evaluative standard embedded in our language, we [should] attend instead to the consequences of employing one alternative or other—more specifically, to the likelihood that use of one system or the other will lead to something we value (p. 130). [W]hat will be really important in choosing among cognitive systems will be the consequences to which they lead (p. 130). Pragmatism does not give up on the project of assessing cognitive processes. Quite the contrary. Epistemic pragmatism offers an account of cognitive evaluation that is both demanding and designed to produce assessments that people will care about. For a given cognitive agent in a given historical setting, it will typically be the case that a pragmatic evaluation will rank one cognitive system higher than another . . . But it will near enough never be the case that pragmatism ranks all contenders on par (p. 141). 13. Stich states that he is "prepared to find that people in another culture


14.

15.

16.

17.

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are doing quite a good job of cognition, given their goals and circumstances, even though their system of cognitive processes would be a disaster for us" (p. 141). "TRUE*" and "TRUE**" beliefs refers here to beliefs which are "true" on different accounts of "head-world relationships" for which Stich says there is "enormous space." A full analysis of Stich's argument for this conclusion is beyond the scope of this work, but this conclusion is crucial for Stich's defense of NCP. Two things might be said as possible ways to counter Stich's conclusions. First, one might defend what Stich calls analytic epistemology by standing against cognitive diversity, through an account of just how one can "determine whether our cognitive process are good ones" (p. 91). One might do this, not by determining a "criterion" of justification or rationality, which I think, Stich rightly points out is doomed to failure (pp. 91—2). Rather, one might follow what Roderick Chisholm presents in his "The Problem of the Criterion" (Chisholm, 1973), by rejecting "criterion" based accounts of cognitive normativity and focus instead on the particular individual cases of knowledge generated by our cognitive processes (Chisholm, 1989, pp. 6—7), and develop a normative account in that way. Second, one might give an account of just how our beliefs "picture" or "map" onto the things that they are about. If one could give such an account, then one might be able to show that there is a normativity for beliefs mapping or being in some way identifiable with what they are about. Stich claims that this understanding of beliefs is merely metaphorical, and given materialism "beliefs must be located somewhere in the material universe—presumably in the brain" (Stich, 1990, p. 102). Both of these strategies would require a great deal of work, if they were to succeed at all, and a full discussion of them are beyond the scope of this work. For the purposes of this work it is interesting to note that Stich indicates that Rorty is a philosopher who has shown some "insightful observations on the pragmatist's rejection of the view that there is a single desirable way in which beliefs should relate to the world" (footnote 12, p. 168). Stich states that "Perhaps there are other, more plausible reasons to find epistemic relativism worrisome. But if so, I don't know what they are" (p. 141). Stich's entire understanding of his approbation of relativism does not, on the face of it, seem to be a discussion of ER at all. ER, as it has

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been formulated from Protagoras down through history, is concerned with epistemic features of human beings (e.g. beliefs, statements, standards of justification) being relative to something else. Stich's discussion focuses entirely on processes which are not epistemic. Thus, Stich's discussion does not in any standard way seem to be a discussion of ER. There are two ways that one might formulate Stich's position so that it is relevantly similar to ER. First, one might claim that while Stich is concerned with processes, he is not merely concerned with them, but only in so far as they contribute to the development of some epistemic state of a cognizer. Second, Stich might be arguing that the epistemic states with which ER is concerned are nothing but cognitive processes. However, even if such a reduction were possible, and a naturalist about epistemology might agree that it is possible, Stich is still not focusing on the same thing on which the traditional friends and foes of ER are focused. If this is right, then Stich is simply not an epistemic relativist. 18. A full defense of moral objectivity may be needed in order to make this point against Stich, as well as demonstrating the connection between moral and epistemic values. 19. That both Putnam and Rorty (and I will include Maclntyre here as well) attempt to glean insights into relativism without being commited to relativism is seen in Margolis, 2002, p. 135.

Chapter 3

Relativistic Tensions in Maclntyre's

Epistemology

"[RJelativism . . . is one of those doctrines that have by now been refuted a number of times too often." (Maclntyre, 1987a, p. 385)

Introduction: three key features of Maclntyre's epistemology

There are three key features of Maclntyre's epistemology which, he claims, taken together do not lead to relativism. i. ii. iii.

Having knowledge and being rational are dependent on certain perspectival aspects of one "tradition" or another. 1 There is no neutral, i.e. supra or a-traditional way to evaluate competing knowledge or rationality claims.2 There can be rational defeat of one tradition by another.

The first two features of Maclntyre's epistemology are manifest in his paper "Practical Rationalities as forms of Social Structure" where Maclntyre asks whether we ought to "draw some kind of relativist . . . conclusion" from the first two features (Maclntyre, 1998a, p. 134). Maclntyre indicates how someone might, contrary to Maclntyre's own view, argue that these two features of his epistemology lead to relativism: Since each mode [tradition] has its own canons of rationality internal to it, and since none of these modes can claim to exemplify anything that we might be able to conceive of as


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practical rationality as such,3 that is as providing us with a set of timeless, ahistorical, transcultural norms, or at least norms which can for most purposes be treated as such, analogously to the way in which we treat the laws of logic, then it seems that it must be the case that there can be no neutral impersonal set of standards by means of which we can judge one mode of practical rationally superior to alternative modes. [Thus], we can adopt . . . any one out of a range of possible perspectives . . . we can have no grounds for judging one perspective superior to another (p. 134). The argument in the preceding paragraph runs something like this: i. ii. iii. iv.

Standards of rational evaluation are internal to a tradition, If standards of rational evaluation are internal to a tradition, then there are no neutral standards, If there are no neutral standards, then any perspective can be adopted.4 Therefore, any perspective can be adopted.

Maclntyre presents the following similar argument in his Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (henceforth, WJWR), an argument which seems to show that epistemological relativism is the logical conclusion of the first two features of his epistemology: i'.

The only available standards of rationality are those made available by and within traditions.5 ii'. "If the only available standards of rationality are those made available by and within traditions, then no issue between contending traditions is rationally decidable" (Maclntyre, 1988, p. 352). iii'. Therefore, no issue between contending traditions is rationally decidable. Maclntyre's response to these arguments is that there are ways to rationally decide on an issue between contending traditions, and this is essentially a defense of the third feature of his epistemology.6 Before proceeding to examine Maclntyre's defense of how conflicts

Relativistic Tensions in Maclntyre's Epistemology

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between competing tradition-bound knowledge claims are resolved non-relativistically, an examination of what exactly Maclntyre means by the notion of knowledge and/or rationality within a tradition is needed.

Rationality within traditions

It is safe to say that Maclntyre's major project in his writings from the publication of After Virtue to the present has been to establish and defend a particular view of the nature of reality and our knowledge of it. While Maclntyre appears to be primarily a "moral" philosopher (that is a philosopher concerned with the implications of one's theoretical outlook on how one lives one's life or how the good life is to be established for a society), his work involves a specific epistemology. The key epistemological point which Maclntyre makes throughout his works is that our knowledge of the world comes only from within the structures of the tradition which we inhabit. Maclntyre uses the trilogy of books, After Virtue (1984), Whose Justice? Which Rationality?(1988), andThree Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (1990a) to make his case for his particular views of ontology, epistemology and axiology, views which in the end appear to be in the "tradition" of Aristotle and St Thomas Aquinas. While the overall claims that Maclntyre reaches about the superiority of this particular tradition are important and worthy of study, I am particularly interested in the concepts and arguments that he uses to establish his views about the nature of knowledge, and how he attempts to avoid relativism in the process. His attempt to avoid relativism involves the way in which he treats the idea of knowledge being constituted by one's relation to a particular tradition. Let us now turn to this notion of tradition and examine how it fits into the discussion of Maclntyre's attempt to establish a non-relativistic epistemology. Even prior to After Virtue, Maclntyre's ideas about knowledge, truth and rationality were tied intimately with the background standards, i.e. "tradition," which one inhabits. (For an excellent

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introduction to the scope of Maclntyre's ideas and the intellectual influences upon them, see Weinstein, 2003.) In a compilation of essays entitled Against the Self-Images of the Age published ten years before After Virtue, the notions of tradition-constituted rationality and knowledge were latent in Maclntyre's epistemology. In that work he states, "To characterize a belief as irrational is to characterize the intellectual procedures and attitudes of those who hold it" (Maclntyre, 1971, p. 247, emphasis added). A few pages later he adds, "To say that a belief is rational is to talk about how it stands in relation to other beliefs, given standards of yet further beliefs as to what counts as a good reason for holding beliefs on a particular type of subject matter in a given culture. Because this is so, we can only ascribe rationality to others on the basis of their criteria of rationality" (Maclntyre, 1971, pp. 250—1, emphasis added). The key phrases in these quotations are "those who hold it" and "in a given culture." The measure of rationality, knowledge or justified belief is done internally to some set of practices within a shared value system. This idea of internally good reasons in a culture for belief or knowledge becomes more explicit in Maclntyre's later works. In After Virtue Maclntyre explicitly states, "[A]ll reasoning takes place within the context of some traditional mode of thought" (Maclntyre, 1984, p. 222). It is important to recognize the emphasis on the communal nature of traditions and rationality within traditions. In Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (hereafter WJWR), Maclntyre has as his goal an attempt to "recover" what has apparently been lost, according to Maclntyre, during the "enlightenment," namely, "a conception of rational enquiry as embodied in a tradition, a conception according to which the standards of rational justification themselves emerge from and are part of a history in which they are vindicated" (Maclntyre, 1988, p. 7). He claims that this conception of rational enquiry takes place within a tradition. Maclntyre states, "So rationality itself, whether theoretical or practical, is a concept with a history: indeed, since there are a diversity of traditions of enquiry, with histories, so it will turn out that there are rationalities rather than rationality" (p. 9).


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Maclntyre simply means that for any tradition of enquiry with a distinct history, there will be within that tradition, procedures and processes which determine the rationality of an individual's beliefs within that tradition. Maclntyre is making rationality dependent on contingent features of traditions of enquiry. 7 What exactly is a tradition within which the standards of rationality function? In After Virtue he states, "A living tradition then is an historically extended, socially embodied argument, and an argument precisely in part about the goods which constitute that tradition" (Maclntyre, 1984, p. 222). In WJWR he expands this notion to the following: A tradition is an argument extended through time in which certain fundamental agreements are defined and redefined in terms of two kinds of conflict: those with critics and enemies external to the tradition who reject all or at least key parts of those fundamental agreements, and those internal, interpretative debates through which the meaning and rationale of the fundamental agreements come to be expressed and by whose progress a tradition is constituted (Maclntyre, 1988, p. 12). Maclntyre is developing an understanding of traditions as the vehicles through which human knowledge is obtained. But tradition-dependent knowledge is not inert, it is rather part of a process that involves epistemic conflicts, both internal and external to a tradition. Maclntyre's account of conflicts that occur between traditions and within traditions is very important in his defense of the three features of his epistemology. I will make a deeper analysis of Maclntyre's accounts of such conflicts in the next section. Before we come to an account of conflicts within and between traditions, we must consider three important points which Maclntyre makes about "traditions." First, there is a very important relationship between "concepts" and traditions: "concepts are embodied in and draw their lives from forms of social practice" (Maclntyre, 1998b, p. 269). To understand a concept adequately, one cannot remove that concept from the tradition in which it is developed or located. Second, traditions develop

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systematic accounts of what the final goals and ends of human life are. This understanding of traditions is one of the main goals of Maclntyre's trilogy of books in which he argues for the superiority of one particular tradition (i.e. that by means of which we understand how to do and be well). The third important thing regarding "traditions" is that "rational enquiry is itself always tradition-dependent" (Maclntyre 1998b, p. 270). What precisely does Maclntyre mean by rationality being "within" a tradition and "tradition-dependent"? He means precisely this: for a human being S's beliefs to be rational, S must live within a group of other people with a shared language, history and authoritative texts. When members of S's tradition want to determine whether or not S's beliefs are rational, they will appeal to the standards that are present in their shared language, history and authoritative texts. Thus, S's beliefs are rational just in case they are consistent with the standards held by the tradition in which S resides. To have rational beliefs, just is to adhere to the authoritative standards that are accepted by a particular group of persons with a shared language, history and body of authoritative texts. Maclntyre puts it this way: "Rational" is not a predicate to be applied to [the beliefs of] individuals qua individuals, but only to individuals qua participants in particular social orders embodying particular conceptions of rationality. It is only because and in so far as social orders embody conceptions of what it is to be rational, that individuals are able to evaluate themselves and others as more or less rational (Maclntyre, 1998a, p. 121). 8 The question that Maclntyre must answer is the following: Why exactly are "the particular conceptions of rationality that a culture has" authoritative? If a culture's conception of rationality is authoritative because it is grounded in something "outside" the culture, then Maclntyre's emphasis on the "internal" nature of rationality to culture can be dismissed (as can his emphasis on the absence of tradition-independent standards of rationality, as will be shown below). However, if a culture's conception of rationality is


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authoritative because of standards within itself alone, then Maclntyre will be saddled with the claim that he is trying to avoid, namely that person S's beliefs are simply arbitrarily "rational" and relativism would seem to follow. However, Maclntyre says at the same time that this view of rationality does not imply "that we ought to regard ostensibly rational claims as expressions of and determined by antecedently definable social structures and interests" (p. 133). It appears that Maclntyre is not claiming that rationality itself is determined by social order, rather he is claiming that all debate for the rationality of a knowledge claim can be done only internally to a specified social order (p. 133), from within the contingencies of a particular tradition. It is clear from what has been said thus far that Maclntyre's account of "tradition" fulfills the standards condition, of the two conditions in Siegel's definition of relativism.9 Does Maclntyre's account of traditions maintain the second, i.e. the no-neutrality condition, in Siegel's definition of relativism? The answer in Maclntyre's works appears to be "Yes." Consider the following quotations from WJWR\ When two rival large-scale intellectual traditions confront one another, a central feature of the problem of deciding between their claims is characteristically that there is no neutral way of characterizing either the subject matter about which they give rival accounts or the standards by which their claims are to be evaluated. Each standpoint has its own account of truth and knowledge, its own mode of characterizing the relevant subject matter. And the attempt to discover a neutral, independent set of standards or mode of characterizing data which is both such as must be acceptable to all rational persons and is sufficient to determine the truth on the matters about which the two traditions are at variance has generally, and perhaps universally, proved to be a search for a chimera (Maclntyre, 1988, p. 166, emphasis added). There is no other way to engage in the formulation, elaboration, rational justification, and criticism of accounts of practical rationality and justice except from within some one particular tradition

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in conversation, cooperation, and conflict with those who inhabit the same tradition. There is no standing ground, no place for enquiry, no way to engage in the practices of advancing, evaluating, accepting, and rejecting reasoned argument apart from that which is provided by some particular tradition or other (Maclntyre, 1988, p. 350, emphasis added). 10 Each tradition can at each stage of its development provide rational justification for its central theses in its own terms, employing the concepts and standards by which it defines itself, but there is no set of independent standards of rational justification by appeal to which the issues between contending traditions can be decided (Maclntyre, 1988, p. 351, emphasis added). It is an illusion to suppose that there is some neutral standing ground, some locus for rationality as such, which can afford rational resources sufficient for enquiry independent of all traditions (Maclntyre, 1988, p. 367). From these quotations it does appear that in some way Maclntyre's epistemology satisfies the no neutrality condition of Siegel's definition of relativism. Although it appears that Maclntyre's epistemology should lead to relativism, and thus be susceptible to the difficulties with ER outlined above, Maclntyre claims that while the standards and no-neutrality conditions are met, his view does not lead to relativism. He claims that relativism is avoidable since traditions can defeat one another. However, their defeat comes not from any external standard, but only from standards internal to particular traditions. There are several important points to notice here. First, given that rationality occurs only with a tradition, conflicts between accounts of what counts as rational cannot be decided by some culturally independent standard. Second, conflicts must be settled by some other methods than appeal to independent standards. Third, the connection between the standards condition (i.e. the claim that being rational is determined by background cultural standards) and the no-neutrality condition, is a tight one. In fact, it appears that


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the former implies the latter—at least Maclntyre seems to think that it does. He appears to be arguing that since standards of rationality exist only within a tradition, there can be no appeal to any absolute standards. Maclntyre claims that any attempt to evaluate some knowledge claim must be done from within a tradition, and any attempt to adjudicate between competing claims cannot be done neutrally, apart from a tradition. However, it does not follow from the fact that there are no non-neutral means of adjudicating between rival knowledge claims that knowledge claims cannot be adjudicated at all. Maclntyre,paceSiegel, claims that competing inter-traditional knowledge claims can be adjudicated. To quote Maclntyre again, "Acknowledgment of the diversity of traditions of enquiry, each with its own specific mode of rational justification, does not entail that the differences between rival and incompatible traditions cannot be rationally resolved" (Maclntyre, 1988, p. 10). Again, he states, "It is first of all untrue . . . that traditions, understood as each possessing its own account of and practices of rational justification therefore cannot defeat or be defeated by other traditions. It is in respect of their adequacy or inadequacy in their responses to epistemological crises that traditions are vindicated or fail to be vindicated" (Maclntyre, 1988, p. 366, emphasis added). How exactly this works will be considered in the following section. Before examining Maclntyre's notions of how traditions defeat one another, it will be helpful to examine how Maclntyre argues for the insight into relativism, without the conclusions of relativism. That is, knowledge is contingent to traditions, but various traditionbound knowledge claims can defeat one another. It is clear that in Maclntyre's 1984 American Philosophical Association presidential address, he tries both to avoid the problems with ER and at the same time to glean some truth from relativism. Maclntyre's task in this paper is to "show that the purported refutations [of relativism] have largely missed [relativism's] point and so been misdirected" (Maclntyre, 1987a, p. 386). Maclntyre states, relativists must be careful not to allow themselves to be trapped into making some type of universal self-referential claim. Such a

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Relativism in Contemporary American Philosophy claim, by denying to all doctrines whatsoever the predicates "is true" and "is false," unless these are radically reinterpreted to mean no more than "seems true to such and such persons" and "seems false to such and such persons," turns the interesting assertion that relativism is true into the uninteresting assertion that relativism seems true to relativists (p. 386).

In describing what he understands relativism to be, it is interesting to note that "relativism" ends up being something which is "a conclusion to inquiry . . . for people who live in certain highly specific types of social and cultural situations" (p. 387). But why should one think that relativism could not be a doctrine qua conclusion to which any individual regardless of their "social or cultural" situation could conclude? One should think this, according to Maclntyre, because (as we have seen) all inquiry is conditioned by one's tradition. This need not mean that nothing exists independently of traditions, nor that these things which do exist independently of traditions are "truth makers" independently of traditions. What it appears to mean is that human knowledge, or human rationality only comes about from within particular traditions. When, according to Maclntyre, does relativism appear? Or to what situations is it the natural outcome? He states, "Some version of relativism can be a rational response" to "social and institutional circumstances" which are comprised of "frontier or boundary situations" (p. 388). Maclntyre gives several examples of what this type of boundary situation might be like. In such a situation an individual is faced with conflicts in cosmology, law, justification, and "alternative and incompatible sets of beliefs and ways of life" (p. 390)." The conflict, however, goes much deeper, since Maclntyre claims "each of these sets of beliefs and ways of life will have internal to it its own specific modes of rational justification in key areas and its own correspondingly specific warrants for claims to truth" (p. 390). The question that ought to be asked of Maclntyre at this point is: if one can recognize, or see, that each tradition has within it its own system of justification of truth claims, then does not this entail that one can see the differences between them and thus judge between


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them (i.e. judge that one is better or more rational or closer to the truth than another)? Maclntyre's answer from what has been presented above would be that they can judge another tradition but only from within their own tradition, and not apart from it. Consider some subject S, who is a member of tradition x who comes to understand a proposition p that is justified by the standards within some other tradition y. So that from within x, S can see that/) is justified in y. S can see the difference between x and y's standards of justification for p. However, S will only be able to understand and evaluate p from within x. Maclntyre claims that understanding the differences between competing standards of epistemic evaluation does not entail that one is able to judge between them. He states that such a person "will not be able to find application for the concepts of truth and justification that are independent of the standards of one community or other" (p. 394). However, let us suppose the following happens. Consider two individuals: A who is from tradition x, and B who is from tradition y. Suppose p is justified in A's tradition x (jfrjx = p is justified in x). Suppose A looks into tradition y and is able to see that ~/)jy. What A knows now or understands, is the following proposition q that (jfrjx & ~/)jy). Suppose B also knows q as well. The question is, is q justified for A in the same way as q is justified for B? Maclntyre's claim is that it is in virtue of their being a part of some tradition that enables A and B to understand q, and this would lead to the claim that for A yjx and for B qjy. Thus, all knowledge even of the same proposition, q, is justified differently given the conditions that are internal to a tradition. Maclntyre claims that there is no "possibility of appeal to some neutral or independent standard of rational justification to justify the choice of one set of beliefs, one way of life, one linguistic community rather than the other" (p. 394). Even though A and B as rational human beings know q, the standard in justifying or knowing q differs from A to B given the differences between their traditions. Thus, according to Maclntyre, the "truth in relativism" is that truth and rational justification "cannot be defined exclusively" from within any one particular tradition. That is, all standards for truth or rational justification come only from within a tradition.

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However, the grounds of these standards are not purely arbitrary, according to Maclntyre. They have a historical basis found within the shared texts of a particular tradition and inherited by members of a tradition from preceding generations. They are grounded in the social fabric and institutions generated by a common language that is used by a particular community. More specifically, the standards of rational justification will be grounded in a body of "canonical texts, texts that define the literary and linguistic tradition that members of that community inhabit" (p. 392). Siegel (2003) claims that the difficulty with Maclntyre's account is that the standards of rational justification are themselves "prerational," and since they cannot be transcended (i.e. there is no neutral standing point between traditions), then the standards of rational justification cannot be given any rational support. However, Maclntyre claims that the concept of rationality is itself a purely tradition-bound concept, and he denies that there are any grounds for the standards of rational justification outside of a tradition. So, the difficulty is that when rationality itself is made to be something which is internal to a tradition, then standards of rationality will also be something that are internal to a tradition. Thus, a criticism of Maclntyre's position which focuses on the rationality of the standards of rational justification itself, must not assume that there is such a thing as extra-traditional rationality. According to Maclntyre, there is no such thing. Siegel also points out that as an argument for relativism, the argument that moves from the idea that there is no neutrality between competing standards for rational justification to the conclusion that all standards are relative "requires appeal to the sort of standard to which the relativist cannot, by her own lights, consistently appeal" (Siegel, 2003). Thus, Maclntyre's claim that there is no neutral epistemic position between traditions is either a neutral epistemic claim, or it is simply a claim that is made from within one particular tradition, i.e. Maclntyre's tradition. If it is a neutral epistemic claim, then Maclntyre's position must be given up. If it is a tradition-dependent claim, then the question immediately arises as to why one should accept that particular tradition over and above another particular tradition.


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Maclntyre might claim that although his description of traditions is given from within his particular tradition, it is able to solve more problems, i.e. it is more epistemically useful than any other view about rationality. I think that this is the route which Maclntyre must take. In his address, he indicates that in the histories of traditions, various problems arise that cannot be solved given the conceptual resources of that tradition. Perhaps Maclntyre is claiming, with respect to his own view that although there is no neutrality between traditions, conflicts between traditions can be settled just in case one particular tradition is able to solve certain problems (social or political problems, for example) more readily than does some other framework. Let us proceed to examine precisely how traditions defeat one another by solving certain problems.

Defeating traditions

Although it seems that Maclntyre's views do meet Siegel's standards and no-neutrality conditions for relativism, Maclntyre claims that relativism does not follow. 12 Maclntyre begins to develop his account of how competing knowledge claims are adjudicated in his After Virtue. In that work, Maclntyre admits that "the existence of distinct, incompatible rival traditions of the virtues" (Wachbroit, 1983, p. 276) appears to point in the direction of relativism and force on his view a dilemma where "either it will be possible to appeal to some set of rationally grounded principles independent of each of the rivals or no rational resolution of their disagreements is possible" (Maclntyre, 1984, p. 276). However, Maclntyre denies that this dilemma exhausts the opinions available to him. He claims that at times there are some ideas which may be accepted as rational that appear within both traditions. That is, there may be some common features between traditions to which the rivals can appeal, while at the same time there are no "extra" traditional standards: One tradition is able

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Relativism in Contemporary American Philosophy to understand and to evaluate—by their own standards—the characterizations of their positions advanced by their rivals . . . Indeed nothing precludes the discovery that the rival tradition offers cogent explanations of weaknesses, of inabilities to formulate or solve problems adequately, of a variety of incoherence in one's own tradition for which the resources of one's own tradition had not been able to offer a convincing account... [A]n encounter with a rival tradition may in this way provide good reasons either for attempting to reconstitute one's tradition in some radical way or for deserting it (Maclntyre, 1984, pp. 276-7).

Thus, while Maclntyre is willing to allow that there are times when there may be no rational way to settle disagreements between conflicting traditions, at other times there are ways to solve these conflicts without appeal to extra traditional standards. For example, tradition A may claim that/) is an item of knowledge, and tradition B may claim that ~p is an item of knowledge. Suppose that in holding to ~p, B is unable to solve certain practical or theoretical problems in some line of enquiry, and while holding top, A is able to solve those same problems. If there is an "encounter" between A and B, members of B may be able to see why A rejects ~p in favor of /). But, B understands A's position, not from the point of view of A, but from B's own point of view. In WJWR, Maclntyre develops in greater detail just how the ability of traditions to defeat one another keeps the first two features of his epistemology from resulting in relativism. Maclntyre states, "acknowledgment of the diversity of traditions of enquiry, each with its own specific mode of rational justification, does not entail that the differences between rival and incompatible traditions cannot be rationally resolved" (Maclntyre, 1988, p. 10). That this is the case supposedly follows from the fact that traditions can be defeated, and are defeated by other traditions. In WJWR Maclntyre makes it clear, through a variety of historical examples, that traditions of enquiry do have such conflicts which can be resolved, and when such conflicts or controversies arise, the resolution proceeds in two stages.13 At the first stage, each


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tradition "characterizes the contentions of its rival in its own terms" (Maclntyre, 1988, p. 166). The key thing to notice here is that any particular tradition gains knowledge of the other tradition only from within its own "reference frame" or "conceptual scheme." The second stage occurs when members of each tradition determine the problems or impediments to enquiry, the intractable barriers to further enquiry, the "insoluble antinomies," and "ask whether the alternative and rival tradition may not be able to provide resources to characterize and to explain the failings and defects of their own tradition more adequately than they, using the resources of that tradition" (Maclntyre, 1988, pp. 166-7). In searching for a way through the conflict between the knowledge claims of rival traditions, Maclntyre indicates that each tradition will see the other "in error from its point of view" (Maclntyre, 1988, p. 170). For example, members of tradition A will claim that/) is an item of knowledge, and members of tradition B might claim that ~p is an item of knowledge. From A's point of view (i.e. given the standards of rationality that are internal to the tradition) B is mistaken, and from B's point of view, A is mistaken. The members of A or B have two options at this point. They might abandon the idea that p or ~p, which are the results of enquiry, are in fact true. However, Maclntyre indicates that this would be to abandon the notion of enquiry as something which is directed "toward a truth independent of the enquiring mind" (p. 170). This option does not appear to be one which Maclntyre thinks likely to succeed. The second option for members of rival traditions in crisis would be to make "a claim to truth of a kind which appeals beyond their own particular scheme of concepts and beliefs, to something external to that scheme" (Maclntyre, 1998, p. 170). That is, A or B might appeal to the existence of some "extra-traditional" standard by means of which one can adjudicate between p or ~p. However, this sort of appeal is something which Maclntyre claims is impossible. How does Maclntyre deal with this option? Maclntyre claims that there are two standard ways to answer the question, "Is there some neutral tradition-independent standard of rational justifiability to which we may appeal?" Maclntyre rejects

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both standard answers. The first way to answer this question is to appeal to self-evident truths (e.g. the common sense of Thomas Reid) that are available to the human mind independent of one's involvement in any particular community (Maclntyre, 1988, p. 329). Maclntyre claims that this route of solving conflicts between traditions is implausible, for the simple reason that there are far too many disagreements about what those fundamental self-evident truths might be. The second option is to begin from "the facts themselves" and work out a solution to the conflict. Maclntyre claims that this attempt to provide solutions to traditions in conflict also fails. His claim is that any attempt to get at the facts themselves can only be done through some "particular theory informed or theory presupposing scheme of concepts . . . There are no preconceptual or even pretheoretical data, and this entails that no set of examples [of facts themselves] no matter how comprehensive, can provide a neutral court of appeal for decision between rival theories" (Maclntyre, 1988, p. 333). Thus, we are simply left with standards of evaluation of rationality that are internal to a tradition. Since Maclntyre rejects these two standard ways of dealing with epistemic conflicts, Maclntyre continues in WJWR to develop an account of just how traditions with standards of rationality that are internal to them can defeat one another. Before detailing exactly how such conflicts take place, Maclntyre gives an explanation of how these conflicts arise. In giving this explanation, Maclntyre indicates that it is important to note how the rationality of a tradition develops. He indicates that the rationality of a tradition "is in key and essential part a matter of the kind of progress which it makes through a number of well-determined types of stage" (p. 354). There are three stages: Stage 1: A tradition begins with some historical contingency . . . some particular community where authority is conferred to "certain texts and voices." Stage 2: Inadequacies within a tradition are identified. 14 Stage 3: "Response to those inadequacies [result] in a set of reformulations, reevaluations, and new formulations


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and evaluations designed to remedy inadequacies and overcome limitations" (p. 354). According to Maclntyre, upon the development of Stage 1 each tradition "has within itself . . . a more or less well-defined problematic set of issues, difficulties, and problems which have emerged from its previous achievements in enquiry" (Maclntyre, 1998, p. 167), and every tradition will generate a "current problematic." A current problematic is a group of "unsolved problems and unresolved issues by reference to which its [the tradition's] success or lack of it in making rational progress toward some further stage of development will be evaluated. At any point it may happen to any tradition-constituted enquiry that by its own standards of progress it ceases to make progress" (p. 361). This is when Stage 2 is reached and involves an identification of an inadequacy of the tradition resulting in what Maclntyre calls an "epistemological crisis" where "[cjonflicts over rival answers to key questions can no longer be settled rationally" within that tradition (p. 362). When the epistemological resources internal to a tradition are faced with intractable difficulties and enquiry is disrupted or halted and an epistemological crisis occurs within a tradition, the members of a tradition may look beyond themselves to the resources of other traditions to solve their own internal difficulties.15 Thus, there will be conflicts between competing traditions. Maclntyre makes it clear that an epistemological crisis can occur when enquiry within a tradition becomes disrupted when there is a direct confrontation with some alien tradition which claims to have resources that will solve the difficulties within that tradition. 16 Maclntyre claims that a tradition goes along until it faces a crisis which cannot be settled internally, a crisis which may involve conflict with competing traditions. The members of that tradition are forced to engage in a little or a lot of conceptual innovation in order to solve the crisis. That which decides between competing claims in an epistemological crisis within a tradition is rational in the sense that an "innovation" within that tradition is rational; an innovation is a solution to some recognized problem.

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The case is similar for an epistemological crisis where the innovation for the problems facing the tradition cannot be or are not found from within that tradition. In this case the solution may be found through and in an encounter with "the claims of some particular rival tradition" (p. 364). Members of the tradition in epistemological crisis come to see that "it is possible to construct from the concepts and theories peculiar to it what they were unable to provide from their own conceptual and theoretical resources" (p. 364). The recognition of the alien tradition's ability to solve their problems comes from within the original tradition itself. The original tradition is forced to recognize "that the alien tradition is superior in rationality and in respect of its claims to truth to their own" (p. 365). 17 Thus, according to Maclntyre one tradition can defeat another: "a tradition can be rationally discredited by and in the light of appeal to its very own standards of rationality in more than one way" (p. 365). Although rationality only exists within a tradition, traditions can be defeated by other traditions. How is this so? "It is in respect of their adequacy or inadequacy in their responses to epistemological crises that traditions are vindicated or fail to be vindicated" (p. 366).18 Successful traditions, superior traditions, and the more rational traditions are just those traditions which have the rational wherewithal to overcome an epistemological crisis. Thus, the first two features of Maclntyre's epistemology do not lead to relativism. In addition to avoiding relativism by showing how traditions defeat one another, Maclntyre claims that given the first two features of his epistemology, an argument for relativist conclusions that depends on them cannot even get off the ground. If a relativist puts forth the challenge from within a tradition, then barring an epistemological crisis, the relativist has "no good reason for putting his or her allegiance to [that tradition] in question and every good reason for continuing that allegiance" (Maclntyre, 1988, p. 367). Maclntyre considers the possibility that the relativist issues her challenge outside of any particular tradition. Maclntyre claims that "it is an illusion to suppose that there is some neutral standing ground, some locus for rationality as such, which can afford rational


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resources sufficient for enquiry independent of all traditions" (p. 367). He continues: The person outside all traditions lacks sufficient rational resources for enquiry and a fortiori for enquiry into what tradition is to be rationally preferred. He or she has no adequate relevant means of rational evaluation and hence can come to no well-grounded conclusion, including the conclusion that no tradition can vindicate itself against any other. To be outside all traditions is to be a stranger to inquiry; it is to be in a state of intellectual and moral destitution, a condition from which it is impossible to issue the relativist challenge (p. 367). What Maclntyre is forcing the relativist to face is that if the relativist accepts premise ii in the argument above, then the game is over; the relativist's argument cannot even be coherently articulated.19

Putnam and Rorty on Maclntyre's relativistic tensions

Hilary Putnam and Richard Rorty offer criticisms of the three features of Maclntyre's epistemology. As will be shown below, these philosophers also maintain both the "standards" and the "no neutrality" aspects of ER, and at the same time attempt to avoid the standard difficulties raised by critics of relativism. Each maintains some form of anti-relativism on the one hand together with relativistic elements in their epistemologies on the other hand. 20 Both Putnam and Rorty appear to agree with the seemingly relativistic elements in Maclntyre's work, but they also criticize his views as being relativistic. The criticisms raised by both Putnam and Rorty focus on three things. First, Maclntyre relies on some kind of essentialism with respect to human beings and their ability to pursue enquiry, where enquiry is understood as a way of acquiring knowledge. Second, Maclntyre is inconsistent in maintaining that there is no neutral way to adjudicate between competing traditions, but that his own tradition is a superior form of enquiry over and

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above any other tradition. Third, Maclntyre is inconsistent in maintaining that there is no neutral way to adjudicate between competing traditions and that his description of the manner in which traditions can defeat one another is the correct way to adjudicate between traditions. The first issue addressed by Putnam and Rorty is that of Maclntyre's essentialism. In The Many Faces of Realism, using ideas taken from Maclntyre, Putnam discusses a brief comparison between Kant and Aristotle regarding just how human beings ought to go about living their lives, and with respect to Maclntyre, how they should go about conducting their epistemic lives. While the discussion is ethically directed, there are epistemic implications. Putnam states, "According to the medievals, as Alasdair Maclntyre has reminded us, we possess a capacity to know the human 'function' or the human 'essence' . . . But (paceAlasdair Maclntyre) Kant understands that this will no longer wash . . . What Kant is saying . . . is that we have to think for ourselves without the kind of guide that Alasdair Maclntyre wants to restore for us, and that fact is itself the most valuable fact about our lives" (Putnam, 1987b, pp. 48-50). In reading these quotations, one is tempted to think that Putnam understands Maclntyre to hold to a view that there is a human essence which determines epistemic standards for human beings. However, as Rorty recognizes below, Maclntyre claims no such thing. Maclntyre clearly states that his own views do "not require any allegiance to Aristotle's metaphysical biology" (Maclntyre, 1984, p. 196). If Putnam understands Maclntyre's "guide" to be one that is grounded in Aristotelian essentialism, Putnam is mistaken; Maclntyre holds no such view. Putnam might mean that Maclntyre wants to establish some sort of normative non-biological, essentialist teleology that guides human conduct, especially epistemic conduct. However, Maclntyre seems equivocal on the normative nature of this "guide" that Putnam ascribes to him. Maclntyre recognizes that there will be a "multiplicity of human practices" (p. 196), while at the same time he envisages individuals thinking for themselves, albeit thinking within one of a multiplicity of traditions. Rorty agrees with Maclntyre that "essentialism" is faulty. 21 Consider the following quotation: "But we have gradually become


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suspicious of essentialism as applied to human affairs, in areas such as history, sociology, and anthropology. The attempt to find laws of history or essences of cultures . . . has been notoriously unfruitful . . . Alasdair Maclntyre on the role of tradition, [has] helped us realize this unfruitfulness" (Rorty, 1991b, p. 67). 22 Rorty claims that once essentialism has been rejected each individual or group of individuals is able to determine for herself what knowledge is. Rorty writes: By dropping what he [Maclntyre] calls "Aristotle's metaphysical biology" (Maclntyre AV, p. 183 [page 196 of 2nd edition]), Maclntyre also drops the attempt to evaluate "the claims to the objectivity and authority" of "the lost morality of the past" (Maclntyre AV, p. 21). For unless a knowledge of the function of the human species takes us beyond Maclntyre's Socratic claims that "the good life for man is the life spent in seeking for the good life for man" (Maclntyre AV, p. 204), the idea of one narrative being more "objective and authoritative" than another, as opposed to being more detailed and inclusive, goes by the board (Rorty, 1991b, p. 161, footnote 30). Rorty, as opposed to Putnam, has interpreted Maclntyre correctly here regarding Maclntyre's views on essentialism. The last quotation from Rorty indicates, however, that this understanding of Maclntyre's views raises the second problem for Maclntyre, which Putnam also recognizes. The problem is that Maclntyre seems to be arguing that there is no neutral way to adjudicate between competing traditions, but that his own tradition is superior to any other. Let us recall again the three main features of Maclntyre's epistemology: i. ii.

iii.

Having knowledge and being rational are dependent on certain perspectival aspects of one "tradition" or another. There is no neutral, i.e. a-traditional or traditiontranscendent way to evaluate competing knowledge or rationality claims. There can be rational defeat of one tradition by another.


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Putnam claims that Maclntyre implicitly holds to a fourth epistemic feature: iv.

Maclntyre's own tradition, an Aristotelian/Thomistic tradition, is superior than other traditions.

Putnam claims that there is an inconsistency on Maclntyre's part between iv. and ii.23 If, according to Maclntyre's claim ii, there is no neutral way to evaluate traditions, then how can Maclntyre's own tradition be superior to any other? Putnam calls Maclntyre's view a "Golden Age" view. Putnam accuses Maclntyre of selecting one particular "tradition" and using it as a platform from which to judge other various traditions, and this seems inconsistent with Maclntyre's own claim that there is no such neutral traditiontranscendent place from which to judge traditions. Putnam recognizes the difficulty when he indicates that Maclntyre maintains the idea that . . . one system of ... beliefs can "rationally defeat" another system; which does indeed insist that there can be progress in the development of world views but [Maclntyre's view] is haunted by the suggestion that that progress fundamentally stopped somewhere between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, and that we have been retrogressing ever since (Putnam, 1992a, p.185). 24 Maclntyre responds to Putnam by claiming that it is not inconsistent to maintain that some traditions are superior to others, and that there is no neutrality between traditions, because he maintains the additional claim that traditions can defeat one another. Maclntyre states that although enquiry proceeds from within a particular tradition, a tradition must know "how to identify its own incoherences and errors and how then to draw upon the resources of other alien and rival traditions to correct these" (Maclntyre, 1998c, p. 251). Maclntyre indicates that Putnam ignores "what I have written about the relationships between different and rival traditions of enquiry" (p. 251). Thus, Maclntyre


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responds to this criticism by arguing that if traditions can defeat one another, then the tradition which Mclntyre inhabits has certain resources within it able to solve certain epistemic crises better than any other tradition that rivals his own. Thus, Maclntyre argues that he is not inconsistent in maintaining both that there is no neutrality between traditions, and that his own tradition is epistemically superior. Even if Maclntyre's response is adequate here, Maclntyre's views still appear to be inconsistent, according to Putnam, and this is the third difficulty with Maclntyre's epistemology. In addition to the four features of Maclntyre's epistemology listed above, Putnam claims that there is a fifth feature implicitly held by Maclntyre: v.

Maclntyre's account of iii is superior to any other account of iii.

Maclntyre is inconsistent in maintaining v as a tradition-neutral knowledge claim. That is, Maclntyre is inconsistent in maintaining both that there is no neutral way to adjudicate between competing traditions and that his description of the manner in which traditions can defeat one another is the correct way to understand the interaction between traditions. Putnam recognizes that, "Maclntyre insists that rationality (but not truth) is relative to one's paradigm [Putnam is referring to Maclntyre's arguments from After Virtue]. No historical or universalistic account of rationality can be given at all, he insists" (Putnam, 1995a, p. 268). According to Putnam, it is inconsistent for Maclntyre to maintain that there is no neutral account of rationality and to give a normative account of how traditions defeat one another. Putnam rejects Maclntyre's idea that: there is a fixed principle governing rational discussion between paradigms, which allows one paradigm to sometimes "rationally defeat" another. 25 It is in the application of this principle that Maclntyre is forced back upon what amounts to "What Is Agreeable to [Maclntyre's] Reason" (Putnam, 1995a, p. 268).

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The key to Putnam's objection is that if, according to Maclntyre, there is no tradition-neutral account of rationality, then there can be no tradition-neutral account of how traditions can rationally defeat one another. Although it is an empirical fact that traditions do in fact interact, an account of the nature of such interactions that is transcendent must, according to Maclntyre, be a description that is only justified within some particular tradition. If rationality is relative, then everything about rationality, including principles by which one tradition rationally defeats another, is also relative.26 Other critics have recognized this same point. Snider states, "it surely seems to be the case that adherents of other traditions [ones that might compete with Maclntyre's] could write their accounts of these same traditions [that Maclntyre claims are inferior to the one he is advancing], and of course their own tradition should, one would suppose, come out on top" (Snider, 1989, p. 390). Snider speculates that Maclntyre might say, well, unless those traditions are actually written, so that we could "begin to decide" which is most rational, we cannot "be assured of such relativist . . . claims" (p. 390). But need these alternative historical arguments be made in order to dispel the theoretical possibility of the competing claims that alternative historical arguments might make against Maclntyre's own? Maclntyre must provide some indication as to how his reader might adjudicate between competing historical arguments as to the superiority of one explanation of the interaction of traditions, and the defeat of one tradition by another. Similarly, Isaac states "Maclntyre's theory of rationality would seem to contradict his own claim about the tradition-bound character of all rationalities" (Isaac, 1989, p. 667). Putnam and others are claiming that features ii and iii in Maclntyre's epistemology are inconsistent. Susan Feldman also indicates that there is some relativistic tension in Maclntyre's work. She claims, "Only if there is some perspectiveless, absolute standpoint from which characters, lives, and traditions can be observed and judged, can Maclntyre move beyond this relativism" (Feldman, 1986, p. 316). Citing Feldman, Christopher Lutz responds by claiming that there is a distinction between relativity, i.e. tradition-bound rationality, and epistemic relativism as defined above. Lutz claims that Maclntyre's relativity


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is "the real condition of human inquiry" (Lutz, 2004, p. 77). But this is just where the problem lies. If Lutz' claim is taken in the strongest sense, then Maclntyre is telling his reader the real condition of human inquiry in a non-tradition-bound sense. That is, if Lutz really means what he says here, then Maclntyre is presupposing a real non-tradition-bound way of telling us the real condition of human enquiry, but this is what Maclntyre denies is possible. Maclntyre responds to this line of criticism, as has been shown above, by claiming that while iii is true from within his tradition, it can be shown to apply to other traditions just in case one tradition defeats another in the way outlined above. However, this presupposes that Maclntyre's own account of the truth of iii is correct. If someone from a tradition different from Maclntyre's who maintains -iii is confronted with Maclntyre's claim that iii, then how is one to adjudicate between them? According to ii, there can be no appeal to some standard that is neutral between both traditions. Item iii seems to be functioning as something which is neutral between traditions, but according to ii, there is no such thing, and thus Maclntyre is inconsistent in maintaining ii and iii. While Maclntyre does not address directly this line of criticism, from what we have seen of his views, Maclntyre might respond to this objection raised by Putnam and others by arguing that there are two ways to understand rationality. First, there is the common way of understanding rationality as practiced by individuals within a community which is tradition dependent. Second, there is a way of understanding rationality as something seen instanced throughout the history of philosophy or science in various paradigm shifts. This way of seeing rationality is simply seeing how groups of human beings in their traditions interact and defeat one another. That Maclntyre thinks that there is such a way of understanding rationality is evidenced in his lengthy examples of various figures and philosophical movements in the history of philosophy in both After Virtue and Whose Justice? Which Rationality?. Maclntyre's appeal to this way of understanding rationality does not help him get around Putnam's objection. While Maclntyre may offer descriptions of various traditions confronting one another, he is

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Relativism in Contemporary American Philoso j

unable to offer any extra-traditional justification of the correctness of his account of such confrontation and interaction. 27 As Scott Smith writes, Maclntyre "is intent on giving us not just a statment of how things are for his way of life . . . but rather a full-blown attempt to persuade others that his is how they ought to see the world, too" (Smith, 2003, p. 202). Maclntyre may have to face other accounts than his own of the interaction of traditions, accounts which are justified within some other tradition than Maclntyre's own. Maclntyre's justification of the correctness of his account of rationality as something that goes on between traditions is stymied by his acceptance of rational relativity articulated in ii. If there were some sense in which human rationality were absolute, (e.g. dependent for its properties on intrinsic essential human nature, or on the epistemic character of rationality itself), then a non-relative account of how various groups of rational beings should interact could be determined. But, Maclntyre provides no such account. Thus, Maclntyre cannot provide a consistent non-relative account of how rationality should operate. In conclusion, it has been shown that Maclntyre indeed attempts "to navigate a path between naive epistemological foundationalism and the relativism celebrated by many 'postmodernists'" (Isaac, 1989, p. 667). 28 The main thing that we learn from Rorty's and Putnam's criticisms of Maclntyre's views is that there is an inconsistency faced by anyone who claims both that there is no neutrality between competing tradition-bound knowledge claims, and that some particular perspective or tradition is better suited for inquiry than others, and that one can avoid relativism by giving an account (which is itself tradition dependent) of how traditions defeat one another, when that account may be rationally acceptable from within the tradition in which it is given, but not from within other traditions. Thus, in so far as Maclntyre's epistemology is relativistic, it will fall prey to the objections to ER in Chapters 1 and 2. However, Maclntyre's claim that ER can be avoided by maintaining iii (i.e. his account of how traditions defeat one another) cannot itself be understood in any sense to be normative or correct, since it will only be correct for the tradition from within which it is given. While the


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first two features of Maclntyre's epistemology imply ER, and thus are problematic in the ways that ER was shown to be problematic, the third feature of Maclntyre's epistemology (the account of how traditions can rationally defeat one another) was presented to avoid those problems confronting ER. But, the third feature is itself only true or rational, for or within the perspective of Maclntyre's own tradition. So, Maclntyre is committed to the conclusion that given a different explanation of the interaction of traditions, an explanation that is in competition with his own explanation, there is no neutral way to evaluate comparatively that explanation with Maclntyre's preferred explanation. Thus, the criticisms raised by Putnam and Rorty demonstrate that the first two relativistic features of Maclntyre's epistemology prohibit Maclntyre's third feature from freeing Maclntyre's epistemology from the problems of ER.

Notes

1. This roughly corresponds with Siegel's standards conjunct in the definition of ER. Siegel's definition of epistemological relativism begins with the standards conjunct: For any knowledge-claim p, p can be evaluated (assessed, established, etc.) only according to (with reference to) one or another set of background principles and standards of evaluation Si, . . . Sn.

The definition continues with the no neutrality conjunct: and given a different set (or sets) of background principles and standards /, . . . sn', there is no neutral (that is, neutral with respect to the two (or more) alternative sets of principles and standards) way of choosing between the two (or more) alternative sets in evaluating^ with respect to truth or rational justification, p's truth and rational justifiability are relative to the standards used in evaluating^ (Siegel, 1987, p 6). 2. This corresponds with Siegel's no neutrality conjunct. 3. I think that Maclntyre's argument is fundamentally the same whether one considers theoretical or practical rationality or knowledge or truth.

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4. Any tradition or standard is as good as any other. 5. Again, this is the first and paramount feature of Maclntyre's epistemology, and corresponds to Siegel's first condition in his definition of relativism. 6. Various reviewers of Maclntyre'sWJWRare clear to point out that Maclntyre maintains that his views do not lead to relativism: Although there can be no rational inter-traditional debate . . . nevertheless [according to Maclntyre] relativism . . . (no tradition can be rationally preferred to any other) . . . can be rejected (Matson, 1989, p. 564). Whether Maclntyre adequately escapes the criticisms of the cultural relativist is open to dispute. That he personally rejects both cultural and individual relativism, however, is clear. The basis of his rejection is also clear. Maclntyre affirms that there is no conception of justice, reason, or for that matter, revelation, independent of some historical tradition. He also affirms, however, that it is possible to demonstrate that some traditions are morally and intellectually superior to others (Von Dohlen, 1997, p. 208). Maclntyre argues, rational justification and assessment must rely on standards which are internal to particular, historicallyconditioned traditions of enquiry. What is more, Maclntyre contends that this denial of a-historical standards of rational justification does not necessarily lead to relativism; for (Maclntyre maintains) there are conditions in which it can be rational to abandon the claims of one tradition in favor of those of another, despite the fact that the only available standards of rational assessment are internal to the competing traditions (Jay, 1989, p. 338). Maclntyre is particularly interested in showing that the rationality of traditions does not lead to ... relativism (p. 343). 7. For additional analyses of Maclntyre's understanding of traditiondependent rationality in Whose Justice? Which Rationality? see Porter, 2003, pp. 43-56. 8. It must be emphasized that Maclntyre is making a claim of dependency between a conception of rationality that is internal to a culture with the evaluation of being rational. His point is that all evaluations of rationality are dependent upon the concepts or standards of rationality in a culture. If one is to evaluate someone as being rational, one does so by using the standards of rationality internal to the culture in which the evaluation takes place.


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9. Maclntyre makes this very clear when he states, "There is no standing ground, no place for inquiry, no way to engage in the practices of advancing, evaluating, accepting, and rejecting reasoned argument apart from that which is provided by some particular tradition or other" (Maclntyre, 1988, p. 350), and "the resources of adequate rationality are made available to us only in and through traditions" (p. 369). 10. See also Maclntyre, 1990b, "the question of what constitutes the rationality of a tradition and how particular traditions are to be evaluated as more or less rational . . . cannot be adequately answered except from some one particular standpoint" (p. 117). 11. Maclntyre's conjunct of beliefs and ways of life is apt, since being rational means having certain beliefs which are in turn determined to be rational by means of the standards of the tradition or way of life which one inhabits. 12. Bellantoni, 2000, p. 21 also recognizes this point in Maclntyre's work. Stephen Lutz states, "For Maclntyre to overcome the relativist challenge, he must show that while, 'the only available standards of rationality are those made available within traditions,' the object of enquiry nonetheless has its own existence and imposes its own limits on the reasonableness of theories" (Lutz, 2004, p. 69). 13. One main example given in WJWRis the conflict between thirteenth-century Augustinian and Aristotelian traditions (Maclntyre, 1988, p. 166). Another example Maclntyre cites is the conflict between seventeenth and eighteenth-century rationalists and empiricists (Maclntyre, 1990b, p. 256). 14. The notion of inadequacy is important here. Remember, inadequacies are always inadequacies with respect to something that is adequate, e.g. an inadequate door is one that doesn't fit the frame into which one tries to fit it. However, according to Maclntyre, inadequacies are never quite as simple as this door analogy; inadequacies are always inadequacies-as-seen-from-within-a-tradition. One begins to wonder whether Maclntyre's notion of inadequacy is itself adequate. Maclntyre claims that "falsity is recognized retrospectively as a past inadequacy when the discrepancy between the beliefs of an earlier stage of a tradition of enquiry are contrasted with the world of things and persons as it has come to be understood at some later stage" (p. 357). Yet, if this is the case, then how exactly are inadequacies identified in the history of a tradition's development? An inadequacy is always known as an inadequacy because what is thought to be

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15. 16. 17.

18.

19.

20. 21. 22.

Relativism in Contemporary American Philosophy needed (like the door analogy above) is not fulfilled. It seems clear that we see inadequacies quite easily ahead of time, even though we see them relieved after the fact. Maclntyre points to the encounter between the scholastic and Galilean and Newtonian natural philosophies as one such example. See Maclntyre, 1988, p. 12, and Maclntyre, 1990b, pp. 255-6. Maclntyre's claim that there is some sense to be made of "superiority" of rationality among competing traditions certainly does not sound like relativism. This point is also made by Von Dohlen, 1997, p. 213, Fuller, 1998, pp. 27-9, and Gutting, 1999, p. 107. According to one commentator, "The incommensurability of truth and justification which sometimes exists between different traditions can be overcome by processes such as synthesis and reductio ad absurdum. By such means commensurability between traditions is achieved without recourse to ... a neutral framework" (Fuller, 1998, p. 99). Maclntyre claims that this argument cannot be made by the relativist because it presupposes a position "outside" of any particular tradition, and this is impossible, according to Maclntyre. Maclntyre states, "Those who have maintained otherwise either have covertly been adopting the standpoint of a tradition and deceiving themselves and perhaps others into supposing that theirs was just such a neutral standing ground or else have simply been in error"(M aclntyre, 1988, p. 367) (Maclntyre's emphasis). However, we ought to ask, "In error according to the rationality of which tradition?—one is tempted to ask (though not on behalf of the Relativist, who should of course be bashed at every opportunity)" (Matson, 1989, p. 565). Matson claims that Maclntyre is not thinking of traditionally constituted error, "but of just plain error. And if there is plain error then there is plain truth—and plain reason" (p. 565). If this is right, then this shows that the first feature of Maclntyre's epistemology is false. See Margolis, 1991, pp. 54—5, for a brief comparison of the rejection of relativism by these three thinkers. Putnam does not favor any kind of essentialism either (Putnam, 1994, p. 447), but he is mistaken in attributing this view to Maclntyre. Rorty does not include "epistemology" as one of the items in this list of "human affairs," probably because Rorty disparages "epistemology" per se (as will be shown below). However, I think that it is safe to add "epistemology" to this list, even if epistemology is understood as Rorty understands it. In fact, since Rorty agrees with and apparently has learned from Maclntyre that "essentialism" is a non-starter, he


23.

24.

25. 26.

27.

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comes to the conclusions he does about what epistemology is, or rather is not, namely a theory about the nature or essence of knowledge as such. Claim iv is actually an instance of iii. Maclntyre's view is that his own tradition is able to defeat other traditions. That is, it is able to solve problems better than its competitors, and it is able to explain why its competitors cannot solve those problems. Putnam is simply pointing out that Maclntyre understands that the philosophical tradition generated in this period, especially Thomism, is superior to other traditions. For a similar point, see Ballard, 2000, pp. 79-80. See the section Defeating traditions above. Wallace makes a similar point: "[I]f we look closely at the conditions in which [Maclntyre] thinks this kind of rational conversion [i.e. one tradition defeating another] is possible, it turns out that there must after all be standards of rationality which are shared between the contending traditions. These will be standards of explanatory adequacy . . . change [s] of view will be rational . . . only if adherents of both traditions, using their own standards of explanatory adequacy, agree that one tradition provides a better explanation than another of the second traditions' epistemological crisis" (Wallace, 1989, p 345). For an additional discussion of Wallace's argument, see Smith, 2003, pp. 198-200. If there is some agreement between rational traditions, then it is not the case that "the only available standards of rationality are those made available by and within traditions," and this seems to show that the second feature of Maclntyre's epistemology is false. Jack Weinstein attempts to defend Maclntyre against this charge. He states, "It is not inconsistent for Maclntyre to claim that all rationality is tradition-bound . . . This assertion is, in fact, a particular view put forth by a particular tradition and if another tradition wishes to challenge it on either its own grounds . . . then it can do so" (Weinstein, 2003, p. 88). This seems to me to still be a universal claim, when its negation is presented, there is still no non-nuetral way to adjudicate the dispute, and this leads to relativism. Weinstein claims, "Maclntyre is a relativist to a certain degree" (p. 90), but he does not think that this is a problem for Maclntyre. However, it seems that it is. Weinstein states, "Each tradition is committed to a conception of truth. This conception is not relative because it is based upon a well-established theory of rationality and can be defended as

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such" (p. 91). This will not do a defense of Maclntyre's position. If there are different tradition-bound conceptions of truth, and there are no neutral ways to adjudicate between them, then relativism follows. Further, "a well-established theory of rationality" must also be tradition bound, and again a denial of neutrality between tradition bound theories of rationality will also lead to relativism. 28. That relativism is a difficulty was shown in Chapters 1 and 2; whether "naive epistemological foundationalism" is a difficulty is another matter entirely.

Chapter 4

Relativistic Tensions in Putnam's Epistemology

"The phenomenon of conceptual relativity is a mind-boggling one." (Putnam, 1992a, p. 118)

Introduction

Hilary Putnam, like Maclntyre, charts an epistemological path that attempts to steer clear of relativism. Yet, there are relativistic elements in his epistemology. In the first section, I will show how Putnam argues against relativism. In the second section, I will present what Putnam himself has indicated are the key features of his epistemology, and I will examine how Putnam's conceptual relativity attempts to avoid ER. In the third section, I will state and evaluate Maclntyre's and Rorty's criticisms of Putnam's conceptual relativity. Before beginning these tasks, let me give a brief history of the massive volume of Putnam's philosophical writings. The scope of the material that has been used for this chapter covers Putnam's work from his 1976 APA presidential address, "Realism and Reason," to the present.1 It was from this time that Putnam's views underwent a major shift. After 1976, Putnam abandons his former "scientific realist" epistemology and tries to develop a qualified "internal" or "pragmatic" realist epistemology. In a recent doctoral work on the intellectual history of Putnam's views, this shift is emphasized (Barrera, 1997). A recent commentator on this shift in Putnam's philosophical position maintains that the 1976 paper is a key

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transition point in Putnam's thought (Haldane, 1996). Putnam himself states that up to his 1976 lecture he was "a 'realist' (without any qualifying adjective)" (Putnam, 1983, p. vii). In another place he states, "It was the scientific materialist that was dominant in me in the fifties and sixties. I believed that everything there is can be explained and described by a single theory ..." (Putnam, 1992a, p. 2). He states that his philosophical evolution has gone from thinking that there is an "absolute conception of the world" that can be captured in physics to a view that "we should see philosophy as a reflection on how human beings can resolve the various sorts of 'problematical situations' that they encounter" (Putnam, 1992a, p. 3). Although his works prior to 1976 may have arguments against relativism, my concern is only with the time period in which Putnam argues against relativism and puts forth an epistemology that apparently has relativistic elements.

Rejection of relativism Relativism is self-defeating: an argument from Wittgenstein

In his 1981 workReason, Truth and History,Putnam argues tha t relativism is inherently problematic, problematic in the way that Plato understood it to be problematic: it is self-refuting. Simply put, Putnam states, "That (total) relativism is inconsistent is a truism among philosophers. After all, is it not obviouslycontradictory tohold a point of view while at the same time holding that no point of view is more justified or right than any other?" (Putnam, 1981a, p. 119). According to Putnam, "Plato has noticed something very deep" (p. 121) about what is problematic about relativism. Putnam points out that the relativist will claim that: every person [or culture] has his (its) own views, standard presuppositions, and that truth (and also justification) are relative to these. One takes for granted, of course, that whether X is true (or justified) relative to these is itselfsomething


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"absolute" . . . A total relativist would have to say that whether or not X is true relative to P [what the person or the culture thinks], is itself relative (p. 121). Putnam has just re-iterated the self-refuting argument against relativism, developed in the first two chapters. The relativist, according to Putnam, is claiming that any knowledge claim is true relative to a person/culture, but the relativist's claim appears to be an absolute claim that truth is relative to a person/culture. However, according to what the relativist is claiming, the relativist's claim itself cannot be an absolute claim. But, if the relativist's claim itself is not an absolute claim, then it must be a relative claim. But, if the relativist's claim is itself only a relative claim, then it is true only for that person or culture who has made it. It is at this point that Putnam correctly states, "our grasp on what the [relativist's] position even means begins to wobble, as Plato observed" (p. 121). The relativist might say to Putnam, at this point, that the observation that Putnam (and Plato) presented, that "to say that whether or not X is true relative to P, is itself relative" to culture is simply to "offer an explanation of [this doctrine]" (i.e. that it itself is culturally relative) (McCullagh, 1984, p. 328). However, Putnam might respond to this objection by claiming that the relativistic justification of a relativistic system of evaluating knowledge claims simply does not make sense. It is the idea that a relativist can be a relativist about everything, including the justification for her own relativistic claims, that Putnam (through Plato's observations) finds bizarre. However, that a notion is bizarre is not enough to reject it; an argument is needed. Putnam claims that Wittgenstein has an argument against relativism that follows in the tradition of Plato's analysis of relativism. Putnam's rendition of Wittgenstein's argument against relativism (henceforth, WR) runs as follows (Putnam's emphases):2 i. ii.

"The relativist cannot . . . make any sense of the distinction between being right and thinking he his right" (p. 122). If "the relativist cannot . . . make any sense of the distinction between being right and thinking he his right" then "there is ...


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no difference between asserting or thinking on the one hand, and making noises (orproducing mental images) on the other" (p. 122).

iii.

iv.

v.

If "there is ... no difference between asserting or thinking on the one hand, andmaking noises (orproducing mental images)on the other" (p. 122), then "I am not a thinker at all but a mere animal" (p. 122). If "I am not a thinker at all but a mere animal" (p. 122), then "to hold such a view [as i] is to commit a sort of mental suicide" (p. 122). Therefore, "to hold such a view [as i] is to commit a sort of mental suicide" (p. 122).

When Putnam claims that to be a mere animal is to commit a sort of mental suicide, he means that if the relativist maintains that there is "no difference between 'I am right' and 'I think I am right'" then speaking becomes merely the production of "noises in the hope that one will have the feeling one is right," and thinking becomes merely the production of "images and sentence-analogues in the mind in the hope of having a subjective feeling of being right" (pp. 123—4). Putnam adds, The relativist must end by denying that any thought is about anything . . . for he cannot distinguish between thinking one's thought is about something and actually thinking about that thing. In short, what the relativist fails to see is that it is a presupposition of thought itself that some kind of objective "rightness" exists (p. 124). The conclusion in WR above implies that "a consistent relativist cannot treat himself as a speaker or a thinker" (Putnam, 198la, p. 124). 3 No philosopher wants to deny that she is a speaker or a thinker, according to Putnam, and if Putnam's rendition of Wittgenstein's argument against relativism (WR for short) is sound, then this unfortunate conclusion will be the result of relativism. Is this argument sound? There are at least three ways in which the relativist


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could challenge WR. The first way the relativist could challenge WR is considered by Putnam. He states that the relativist will attempt to show that WR is unsound by showing that premise i is false. How does the relativist do this? According to Putnam, he will "borrow the idea that truth is an idealization of rational acceptability. He might hold that X is true-for-me is true if'X is justified-for-me' would be true provided I observed carefully enough, reasoned long enough or whatever" (p. 122) (Putnam's emphasis). However, according to Putnam, the relativist would have the following difficulty: "subjunctive conditionals . . . are like all statements, interpreted differently by different philosophers" (p. 122). The relativist would merely be making a claim that "I think that this view of rational acceptability qua subjunctive conditional is true," or "this view is true-for-me." But this simply proves that premise i in WR is true. Putnam considers two ways in which the relativist might try to make sense of subjunctive conditionals. First of all, the relativist could understand subjunctive conditionals in a "metaphysical realist" manner. However, according to Putnam, to do so the relativist would have to recognize "one class of absolute truths, and so [he] has given up being a relativist" (p. 122) (Putnam's emphasis).4 The relativist might try to understand subjunctive conditionals in a second, "non-realist or 'internal' realist" fashion (i.e. as understood "in large part by grasping their justification conditions" (p. 122) (Putnam's emphasis). The "internal" realist, according to Putnam, understands "truth (idealizedjustification) [to be] something we grasp as we grasp any other concept, via a (largely implicit) understanding of the factors that make it rationally acceptable to say that something is true" (pp. 122—3) (Putnam's emphasis).5 Putnam claims that the internal realist position on truth is "objective" and not "subjective," not subjective in the sense that the relativist thinks that being right is thinking he is right. The internal realist position is also not one of "correspondence to a 'ready-made world' " but is rather, to use Nelson Goodman's words, "primarily a matter of fit" (p. 123), fit of "versions" and "a world," where these versions have some role in making the world they fit (p. 123).6 However, according to relativism even the internal realist notion of "objective 'fit'" (p. 123) is done away with. "Thus, the relativist

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cannot understand talk about truth in terms of objective justificationconditions" (p. 123). Therefore, the relativist's attempt to show that premise i is false, by showing that one can make a distinction between being right and thinking one is right, fails. It fails simply "because the relativist has no objective notion of Tightness for these conditionals any more than he does for any other sort of statement" (p. 123). The relativist's understanding of these conditionals would be correct, simply because he thinks they are correct, since the relativist cannot distinguish between thinking he is correct and being correct. There is a second way that the relativist could challenge WR, without trying to make sense of subjunctive conditionals. The relativist could just deny premise one altogether. The relativist could claim that he can make a distinction between being right and thinking he is right. The relativist could claim that being right just means that he is right because he is "justified by the beliefs and standards of rationality generally accepted by my [the relativist's] culture" (McCullagh, 1984, p. 329). Thus, within a community or culture, the claim that he is right is perfectly clear, and saying that he is right is not the same thing as thinking that he is right. He could think that he is right, but he will be right only if his belief is justified by the beliefs and standards of his culture. Thus, the conclusion of WR, that there is no difference between asserting something and making noises, does not follow, and WR is unsound. Putnam does not address this objection raised by McCullagh in his writings, but one possible response that Putnam could offer would be to focus on the relativist's claim that being right just means being justified by his culture. There are two difficulties with this claim. First, the claim itself results in various absurdities. Second, it is questionable whether the claim itself is right either in a relative sense or in a non-relative sense. First, consider why the relativist cannot deny premise i by making the distinction between being right and thinking he is right through an appeal to the standards of his culture, because the idea that Tightness can consist in agreement with one's culture is an absurd notion. Let me begin with an example that a defender of this kind of "objective" relativism, like McCullagh, might use to defend


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his position. McCullagh might say, if some culture C says that torturing children is wrong, and I (a member of C) say that torturing children is permissible, then my judgment about this case is "objectively wrong," because it goes against the standards of my culture. This example is supposed to show that the distinction can be made, contrary to premise i in WR, that the relativist can make no distinction between thinking he is right and being right. If I think that it is permissible to torture children, according to the defender of this kind of relativism, I am not right in this case, since the standards of my culture maintain that torturing children is wrong. Although this example is supposed to show that the relativist can make sense of the distinction of being right and thinking he is right, the example simply shifts "being right" from meaning what I think is right, to "being right" meaning what my culture thinks is right. And the notion that Tightness just is what the members of a culture think is right, is an absurd notion, which the following example shows. Imagine a culture consisting of religious European peasants in the 1200s who, given their religious and superstitious traditions believe that the bizarre behavior of one of the village inhabitants means that this woman is a witch.7 Suppose that one of the peasants gets transported into the future where she earns her PhD in psychology from a major American university in the 21st century, and then returns to her peasant culture in the past. Suppose further, that upon return to her peasant culture the psychologist adopts all traditions and beliefs of her culture, except those pertaining to psychology. Suppose that this psychologist meets the putative witch, and upon observing her behavior immediately believes her to be suffering from a form of psychosis. According to the relativist who makes Tightness consist in agreement with the standards of a culture, the psychologist's belief will be wrong, just in case the standards of her culture fail to justify her belief, and in this case her culture says that she is wrong. But is the psychologist wrong? According to McCullagh, the psychologist is wrong, since her belief is not justified by her culture. But this is absurd. Surely the Tightness or wrongness of the psychologist's belief that a woman is not a witch but is suffering

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from a form of psychosis has nothing to do with the beliefs of the peasants which makes up her culture, but it has everything to do with the actual psychological and physiological state of the woman whom people believe to be a witch. But, according to the relativist, if the psychologist believes that the woman is not a witch, her belief will be wrong, since her belief is not accepted by her culture. In addition, according to the relativist, even if the psychologist can cure the witch through therapy or drugs so that the woman does not display behavior that is associated with witches, the psychologist's belief will still be wrong, since it is not accepted by her culture. But, this is an absurd notion of the Tightness or wrongness of a belief. Thus, the relativist's claim to have made the distinction between being right and thinking one is right, by means of appeal to the standards of a culture, fails. All that follows for the relativist by appeals to the standards of a culture is that there is now no distinction between being right and our culture thinking that one is right. But the notion that the Tightness of a belief can be determined by the standards of a culture is absurd. Thus, this attempt by the relativist to show that WR is unsound fails. Even if the idea that the Tightness of a belief is determined by the standards of one's culture were not absurd, there is a second reason why this claim cannot show the falsity of premise i in the argument above. The claim that being right means that one is justified by the standards of one's culture is right either in a relative sense (i.e. it is right just in case it is justified by the standards of the culture from within which it is made) or in a non-relative sense (i.e. it is right even if it is not justified by the standards of the culture from within which it is made). However, if it is right in a non-relative sense, then the claim is wrong, since it claims that being right just means being justified relative to the standards of one's culture. In addition, if it is right in a relative sense, then if there is a culture which has standards which do not justify the claim, then in that culture the claim is false. Thus, if the claim is true, the claim for that culture will be false. Thus, the claim is false, and it cannot help the relativist in objecting to premise i, in the argument above. A third way that the relativist could challenge WR is to present a form of relativism that can make sense of the distinction between


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being right and thinking one is right by using the relative standards of a community that are independent from what people think. Preston claims, Objectiveversions of relativism . . . insist that there can be objective reasons within a framework of presuppositions . . . [and] don't seek to deny that there is objective knowledge, but rather to give an account of what that objectivity consists in. Accepting the framework itself is not a matter of being right or wrong, but of training or enculturation. But once accepted, the application of its standards is objective, and doesn't depend on what people think (Preston, 1992, p. 63). Preston claims that Putnam's use of "Wittgenstein's argument doesn't touch any realistic version of objective relativism" (Preston, 1992, p. 65). This objection is different from McCullagh's objection, since Preston is claiming that there are applications of objective standards that are independent from what the members of the community think about those standards, whereas McCullagh simply identifies those standards with what people think. This kind of relativist can supposedly distinguish between thinking one is right and being right, and can maintain "the idea that relative truth is idealized rational acceptability within a framework, and the idea that the objectivity of rational acceptability within a framework consists in the objectivity of what really does follow from the framework principles" (Preston, 1992, p. 65). Preston's arguments do not succeed. Making the standards of objectivity relative to a culture, even if those standards are independent of what the members of the culture think about them, does not help the relativist. Whatever those standards might be, if they are merely relative to that culture, they can have no power or force beyond the confines of that culture. In addition, if the standards of objectivity are merely relative to a culture, then one is faced with a difficulty if there is a culture whose standards (even if those standards are independent from what the entire culture thinks of them) make the belief that standards of objectivity are merely relative to a culture false. If it is true that standards of objectivity


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are merely internal to cultures, then this claim will be false just in case there is a culture which has standards of objectivity which say that this claim is false.8 Thus, if the claim is true, by its own lights it may be false. Since there are no standards which are independent of cultures, one is also faced with the acute difficulty of resolving conflicts between competing "objective relativists." Without any objective rational standards independent of individual cultures, by means of which to adjudicate between competing groups, inquiry indeed becomes so much noise making. I have considered three objections to Putnam's presentation of WR, and I have argued that each objection fails. Thus, WR stands as an effective argument against relativism. This argument shows that the relativist's failure to make a distinction between being right and believing he is right undermines rationality and leads to the mere production of noises, as Putnam states, in the hope that one comes to have the feeling that one is right. Relativism is self-defeating: an argument against the "postmodernists"

In his chapter, "Reason and History," in Reason, Truth and History, Putnam considers the claims of "modern French thinkers"9 who maintain that "below what we are pleased to regard as our most profound spiritual and moral insights lies a seething cauldron of power drives, economic interests, and selfish fantasies. This is the view that is the cutting edge of relativism today" (Putnam, 1981a, p. 157). This cutting edge of relativism has been organized by Susan Haack into an argument as follows: i.

What passes for truth [knowledge, fact, objective evidence, rational argument] often turns out not to be, but rather, something serving the interest of the "powerful."

Therefore: ii.

The concept of truth is ideological humbug/rhetoric used to make people accept the view of the powerful.10


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There are two major difficulties with this argument. First, it is invalid. A relativist might want to make it deductively valid by reconstruing it in the following manner: i'. ii'.

What passes for truth [knowledge, fact, objective evidence, rational argument] often turns out not to be. If what passes for truth [knowledge, fact, objective evidence, rational argument] often turns out not to be, then, the concept of truth is ideological humbug/rhetoric used to make people accept the view of the powerful.

Therefore, iii'.

The concept of truth is ideological humbug/rhetoric used to make people accept the view of the powerful.

This argument, although valid, is self-defeating. If premise ii' were true, it would be true only insofar as it is mere ideological humbug/rhetoric used to make people accept the view of the powerful. Regarding these premises as true, turns them into instruments of power. The relativist who maintains that truth is nothing but ideological rhetoric, cannot prove this to be the case through any sort of logical reasoning that requires an argument with true, simpliciter, premises. In addition, premise ii' is simply false; there are many things that have been thought to be true which in fact are not, but this does not necessitate that truth is ideological rhetoric. Actually, the fact that we can recognize that what passes for truth often turns out not to be, indicates that truth is something beyond mere ideological rhetoric. Thus, this kind of total relativism about truth is a non-starter. Putnam recognizes this and states, "No relativist wants to be a relativist about everything, however. How do these French thinkers put limits on their own relativism?" (p. 158). Putnam considers rejoinders from various relativists which purport to keep this kind of argument from being self-defeating. A relativist might respond to the objection that this argument is selfdefeating by claiming that these premises have some non-epistemic status that gives them some sort of value, e.g. they are " 'just' or

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'unjust' but not true or false" (p. 160). However, this sort of move by the relativist is of no help, according to Putnam. If this claim itself "can be rationally justified, then not every ideology is irrational [i.e. rhetorical humbug]; if it cannot be, then the claim that any institution or policy is 'just' must be as utterly irrational as every other 'ideological' claim is asserted to be" (p. 160). Thus, this rejoinder is of no help to the relativist, and this kind of argument put forward by the relativist is self-defeating. Putnam concludes, "The temptation [of relativism] is to fall into the trap of concluding that all rational argument is mere rationalization and then proceeding to try to argue rationally for this position . . . If all 'rational argument' were mere rationalization, then not only would it make no sense to try to argue rationally for any view, but it would make no sense to hold any view" (p. 162), including relativism. Relativism and solipsism

In the first chapter of this work, I indicated the connection that Putnam sees between relativism and solipsism. In that argument, Putnam indicated that relativism seems to imply something very much like solipsism. In this section, I would like to consider another argument in which Putnam claims that relativism is problematic analogously to the way in which "methodological solipsism" is problematic. Putnam claims that a methodological solipsist is someone who maintains that all our talk can be reduced to talk about experiences and logical constructions out of experiences. More precisely he holds that everything he can conceive of is identical . . . with one or another complex of his own experiences. What makes him a methodological solipsist as opposed to a real solipsist is that he kindly adds that you, dear reader, are the "I" of this construction when you perform it: he says everybody is a (methodological) solipsist (Putnam, 1981b, p. 236). Putnam claims that there are two stances here which are "ludicrously incompatible" (p. 236). On the one hand there is the


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"solipsist stance" in which the methodological solipsist claims that there is an "asymmetry between persons": my body, your body, even your experiences are all constructed from my experiences, and "my experiences are different from everyone else's (within the system) in that they are what everything is constructed from" (p. 236). But the methodological solipsist has another stance as well, one in which there is symmetry between persons. The solipsist says that "you" also are the "I" of a construction when "you" do it, just as I am when I do it. Here Putnam points out the chief difficulty for the methodological solipsist: "The 'y°u' ne addresses his higherorder remark to cannot be the empirical 'you' of the system. But if it's really true that the 'you' of the system is the only 'you' he can understand, then the transcendental remark is unintelligible" (p. 237). There is an analogous problem for the cultural relativist who says, "When I say something is true, I mean that it is correct according to the norms of my culture." If he adds, "When a member of a different culture says that something is true, what he means (whether he knows it or not) is that it is in conformity with the norms of his culture", then he is in exactly the same plight as the methodological solipsist (p. 237). What the cultural relativist has done is simply to state that "It is true according to the norms of my culture, that when a member of a different culture says something is true, what he means (whether he knows it or not) is that it is in conformity with the norms of his culture." Putnam states that the cultural relativist, analogous to the methodological solipsist, makes other cultures to be "logical constructions out of the procedures and practices" of his own culture (p. 238). The relativist's claim that "the situation is reversed from the point of view of the other culture" (p. 238) will not work because the claim itself "cannot be understood," since it is a claim of symmetry between cultural standpoints. However, such symmetry is ruled out by the relativist's own doctrine that truths just are what is correct according to the relativist's culture. Miriam Solomon summarizes Putnam's arguments against methodological solipsism and its relativism analog in the following way:

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Relativism in Contemporary American Philosophy Just as methodological solipsism involves the claim that each person should construct the world out of his or her own experiences, relativism involves the claim that each culture sets what is rational and true, and does so independently of other cultures. Just as methodological solipsism is inconsistent because it also claims that the experiences of other people are constructions of one's own experience, relativism is inconsistent because it also claims that truth in another culture is dependent on truth in one's own culture. Neither the methodological solipsist nor the relativist can occupy a "transcendent" point of view from which all selves, or all cultures, appear the same (Solomon, 1990, p. 215).

Consider the following more formalized arguments of the argument against methodological solipsism and the analogous argument against relativism (P = person and C = culture): The argument against methodological solipsism (MS): 1. Persons PI and P2 construct the world from their own experiences. 2. If PI constructs the world from her own experiences, then the experiences of P2 turn out to be constructed out of Pi's experiences. 3. If the experiences of P2 turn out to be the constructions of Pi's experiences, then the experiences of P2 are not the experiences of P2. 4. If the experiences of P2 are not the experiences of P2, then it is not the case that persons PI and P2 construct the world from their own experiences. 5. Therefore, it is not the case that persons PI and P2 construct the world out of their own experiences. The analogous argument against relativism (RMS): 1. Propositions believed by PI and P2 are true relative to Cl and C2 independently of other cultures.


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2. If person PI maintains that propositions are true relative to Cl independently of other cultures, then the propositions believed by P2 turn out to be true relative to Cl. 3. If the propositions believed by P2 turn out to be true relative to Cl, then the propositions believed by P2 are not true relative to C2 independently of other cultures. 4. If the propositions believed by P2 are not true relative to C2 independently of other cultures, then it is not the case that propositions believed by PI and P2 are relative to Cl and C2 independently of other cultures. 5. Therefore, it is not the case that propositions believed by PI and P2 are true relative to Cl and C2 independently of other cultures. Miriam Solomon has raised two objections to this kind of argument presented by Putnam. First, Solomon rightly recognizes that Putnam defines truth as rational acceptability,11 and that if one defines truth in this way and adds the relativistic claim that rational acceptability is relative to culture, then, barring other objections, RMS will go through. However, Solomon claims RMS will work against the relativist only if the relativist defines truth as rational acceptability relative to culture. Solomon claims, "the relativist with respect to ... justification, who is not also a relativist with respect to truth (and therefore does not understand truth in terms of rational acceptability) escapes Putnam's argument altogether" (Solomon, 1990, p. 215). Since Putnam saddles the relativist with a definition of truth as rational acceptability relative to culture, Putnam's argument works, but if the relativist does not maintain that truth is just what is rationally acceptable in her culture, then, according to Solomon, Putnam's argument does not count against it. Solomon is claiming that the relativist can deny premise 1, in RMS, in favor of 1' of RMS': 1': Propositions believed by PI and P2 are justified relative to Cl and C2 independently of other cultures.

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The rest of the argument RMS' will be the following: 2'. If person PI maintains that propositions are justified relative to Cl independently of other cultures, then the propositions believed by P2 turn out to be justifiedrelative to C1. 3'. If the propositions believed by P2 turn out to be justified relative to Cl, then the propositions believed by P2 are not justified relative to C2 independently of other cultures. 4'. If the propositions believed by P2 are not justified relative to C2 independently of other cultures, then it is not the case that propositions believed by PI and P2 are relative to Cl and C2 independently of other cultures. 5'. Therefore, it is not the case that propositions believed by PI and P2 are justified relative to Cl and C2 independently of other cultures. Solomon thinks that the relativist who maintains 1' will not be subject to the difficulties of RMS. However, this kind of relativist, a relativist about justification, will fall prey to the argument as well. It will turn out that all propositions justified by P2 are justified by Cl and not by C2 independently of other cultures and this results in the same kind of contradiction as the relativist about truth. The form of the argument counts against both relativism about truth or relativism about justification. Solomon is wrong in thinking that the conclusion of RMS can be avoided by maintaining relativism with respect to justification. The reason that RMS works is not because of relativism about truth; it is because of relativism. Solomon's key claim in her first objection to RMS is that one can be a relativist about truth but not about justification. However, it is unclear that an understanding of relativism about justification is even an understanding of justification. The usual understanding of justification (whether it be foundationalist, or coherentist) is that justification is that which provides some reason or indication that a belief is true. To claim that justification can be relative and truth not relative is to talk about something other than justification, since justification carries with it an element of truth indicativeness. 12 So, it is unclear that Solomon's claim that


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one can be a relativist about justification and not be a relativist about truth is in fact, as she puts it, "a genuine epistemological position" (p. 220, footnote 3). The second objection which Solomon raises against RMS is that RMS is not analogous with MS. That is, the positions of the methodological solipsist and the relativist are not analogous. The central focus here seems to be the analogy between premise 2 of MS and premise 2 of RMS. Solomon is willing to allow that premise 2 of MS is true, but that premise 2 of RMS is not, and it is here that Solomon claims that the analogy breaks down. Solomon claims that it is not inconsistent to maintain both that the propositions believed by P2 (and are relative to C2) turn out to be true relative to Cl, and that C2 functions as that which determines the truth of propositions for P2 independently of other cultures, including Cl. According to Solomon, C2 is causally independent from Cl in making beliefs true for P2. Solomon adds that PI need not claim that P2 has Clor that PI chooses C2 for P2. Thus, unlike premise 2 of MS in which PI constructs reality for P2, in premise 2 of RMS, PI does not construct C2 for P2. Consider this rather lengthy quotation from Solomon which shows how Cl might be causally independent from C2. Solomon uses the example of President Bush making a choice between two decisions to make her point. Solomon states: Suppose Bush makes a choice between two alternatives: "Pursue the Tower nomination" and "Abandon the Tower nomination." According to RR [PI], Bush's choice is, as every fact, culturally determined. Yet RR [PI] can still give an account of Bush's autonomy in the usual way, in terms of psychological and environmental causes of Bush's decision. To be sure, these causes—as all states of the world—are culturally determined also. But there is no inconsistency in saying both that Bush's decision was culturally determined and that it was a decision, i.e., arrived at by some chain of causes having to do with Bush's psychological states and environmental factors and causally independent of the social facts determining truths. Similarly, there is no obvious inconsistency in saying both that Karl's [P2's] truths are

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Relativism in Contemporary American Philosophy determined by the norms of RR's [Pi's] society [Cl] and that Karl's [P2's] norms are norms, i.e., rules of Karl's [P2's] society which are socially inculcated and have various histories, often causally independent of RR's [Pi's] society [Cl]. Autonomy, in the sense required for describing both Bush's decision and German norms [C2], requires only this causal independence. RR [PI] is not saying either that Karl [P2] has our [Pi's] norms, or that we [PI] choose Karl's [P2's] norms (p. 217).

Thus, according to Solomon, Putnam has failed to show that MS and RMS are analogous. While Putnam does not respond directly to Solomon's argument, given what he does say, he might respond by saying that Solomon is simply wrong in thinking that C2 can be causally independent from Cl in making beliefs true for P2. Putnam explicitly states that a culture like C2 will "become, so to speak, logical constructions out of the procedures and practices" (Putnam, 1981b, p. 238) of Cl. Putnam's claim is correct. According to Putnam, when PI asserts premise 1 of RMS above, PI is making a claim about C2. However, Pi's claim about P2's C2 can only be true in Pi's Cl, just as P2 is nothing but something constructed out of Pi's experiences in MS. Putnam makes it clear that when PI utters premise 1 of RMS, P2's C2 becomes internally linked to Pi's Cl, and cannot be independent in any sense. Thus, Putnam's saying that P2's C2 is what makes something true for P2, cannot be understood as anything other than a mere reflection of Pi's Cl. 13 Thus, the cases are parallel, and Solomon's objection has missed Putnam's main point in the analogy. In attempting to argue against Putnam's objection to relativism based on an analogy to solipsism, Solomon is defending relativism. She claims that there is a way to make relativism free from charges of incoherence. She states, I contend, however, that the relativist is free to state her position so that it is a doctrine about the concept of truth in the culture from which the doctrine is propounded, not a doctrine about the concept of truth in all cultures. Thus stated, the doctrine is not vulnerable to


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being falsified by finding that another culture denies the truth of relativism [the argument derived from Plato] (p. 218).14 This formulation of relativism is not very philosophically interesting, and is certainly not what most people who claim to be relativists actually claim. The relativist normally claims something like premise 1 in RMS. The relativist doesn't make a claim for herself alone, but she claims that for every person, truth will be relative to their culture. Let us put Solomon's claim here in Putnam's terminology; what the relativist is saying is "When I say something is true, I mean that it is correct according to the norms of my culture" (Putnam, 198la, p. 237). This might simply be a descriptive account of what the members of a culture think truth is, but it can carry no weight other than that. Solomon's doctrine is not relativistic, because, since it is a descriptive claim about how "truth" is understood in a culture, the truth of that claim itself is not determined by a culture, and so is not relativism, as defined in the first chapter of this work.

Relativistic tensions in Putnam's epistemology

Although, as has been shown, Putnam is staunchly against epistemological relativism, there are aspects of his positive account of epistemology which seem to be relativistic and which pull against the conclusions of Putnam's anti-relativistic arguments. An excellent summary of the tension between Putnam's relativism and his anti-relativism is given by Throop and Doran: Putnam's relativist theses: (1) Norms of rationality evolve [Putnam, 1987a, p. 21]. (2) Several incompatible sets of norms of rationality would be acceptable even in an ideal world [Putnam, 198la, p. 148]. (3) There is no such thing as the WORLD'S own norms of rationality [Putnam, 1987b, p. 78]. (4) Truth 15 is in part a function of the conceptual system one adopts, and what objects exist depends in part on one's

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Relativism in Contemporary American Philosophy conceptual scheme [Putnam, 1983, pp. 43—35; 1987b, pp. 21-2]. Putnam's [anti-relativist] theses: (5) Some views are objectively better than others [Putnam, 1987b, p. 77]. (6) Our norms of rationality are attempts to approximate an ideal of transcultural rationality [Putnam, 1984, p. 130]. (7) There is an ideal terminus to the human dialogue [Putnam, 1981a, p. 216]. (8) Ordinary objects really do exist; commonsense realism is roughly correct [Putnam, 1987b, p. 70] (Throop and Doran, 1991, p. 359).

From an examination of these theses, it seems to be the case that, according to Putnam, for any subject S and any proposition/?, there is some "fact of the matter" (some standard) which justifies, nonrelativistically, p for S, and at the same lime, that standard will always reflect S's interests. Thus, it appears that any standard for justification, or knowledge, or rationality for that matter, is both dependent on and independent of S. Does this lead to relativism? Putnam does not think so, since Putnam claims that standards themselves, although dependent on S, can be reformed. Putnam states, "Our norms and standards can be reformed" (Putnam, 1987a, p. 26). 16 Putnam's resolution to this apparent tension and his account of how standards themselves can be reformed (i.e. improved) is manifest through his account of what has been called "internal realism" or "conceptual relativity."17 Putnam's relativist ideas: conceptual relativity

In this section I will explain what Putnam's conceptual relativity (also called internal realism and pragmatic realism and most recently "pluralistic realism"18) is and examine whether or not it meets Siegel's definition of relativism. Conceptual relativity has the following three features. First, truth does involve some sort of "objective" correspondence with reality, but this sort of correspondence is always internal to a conceptual scheme.19 Putnam states:


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In an internalist view also, signs do not intrinsically correspond to objects, independently of how those signs are employed and by whom. But a sign that is actually employed in a particular way by a particular community of users can correspond to particular objects within the conceptual scheme of those users. "Objects" do not exist independently of conceptual schemes. We cut up the world into objects when we introduce one or another scheme of description. Since the objects and the signs are alike internal to the scheme of description, it is possible to say what matches what (Putnam, 198la, p. 52) (Putnam's emphasis). In a more recent work, he states: The phenomenon of conceptual relativity does have real philosophical importance. As long as we think of the world as consisting of objects and properties in some one, philosophically preferred sense of "object" and "property"—as long as we think that reality itself, if viewed with enough metaphysical seriousness, will determine for us how we are to use the words "object" and "property"—then we will not see how the number and kind of objects and their properties can vary from one correct description of a situation to another correct description of that same situation. Although our sentences do "correspond to reality" in the sense of describing it, they are not simply copies of reality . . . the idea that some descriptions are "descriptions of reality as it is independent of perspective" is a chimera (Putnam, 1992a, p. 123) (Putnam's emphasis). Second, truth, warranted assertibility, knowledge or even rationality involves to some extent the interests of the individual. 20 Putnam states: [T]he suggestion which constitutes the essence of "internal realism" is that truth does not transcend use. Different statements—in some cases, even statements that are "incompatible" from the standpoint of classical logic and classical semantics—can be true in the same situation because the

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Relativism in Contemporary American Philosophy words—in some case, the logical words themselves—are used differently (Putnam, 1988, p. 116).

Third, although truth and knowledge are internal to conceptual schemes, this does not entail an "anything goes" relativism nor any sort of subjectivism.21 Putnam states: Internalism is not a facile relativism that says, "Anything goes". Denying that it makes sense to ask whether our concepts "match" something totally uncontaminated by conceptualization is one thing; but to hold that every conceptual system is therefore just as good as every other would be something else. If anyone really believed that, and if they were foolish enough to pick a conceptual system that told them they could fly and to act upon it by jumping out of a window, they could, if they were lucky enough to survive, see the weakness of the latter view at once. Internalism does not deny that there are experiential inputs to knowledge; knowledge is not a story with no constraints except internal coherence; but it does deny that there are any inputs which are not themselves to some extent shaped by our concepts, by the vocabulary we use to report and describe them, or any inputs which admit of only one description, independent of all conceptual choices.... The very inputs upon which our knowledge is based are conceptually contaminated; but contaminated inputs are better than none. If contaminated inputs are all we have, still all we have has proved to be quite a bit (Putnam, 1981a, p. 54). 22 Conceptual relativity is a theory both of the nature of the world and our knowledge of it. Knowledge claims, and assessments of them, always take into account the interests of an individual, interests which themselves make one's knowledge claims correspond to reality, a reality which is in part "cut up" by and through the interests of those who are knowing it. Yet, according to Putnam, this does not imply that every conceptual scheme (and presumably the interests on which those schemes depend) is as good as every other; epistemological relativism does not follow.


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In his The Many Faces of Realism, Putnam states that internal realism (he also calls it "pragmatic realism" (Putnam, 1987b, p. 21)) is "at bottom, just the insistence that realism is not incompatible with conceptual relativity" (p. 17). By conceptual relativity Putnam does not mean "there is no truth to be found." What he does mean, he tries to show by example.23 Putnam asks us to consider a world with three individuals, xl, x2, x3, and ask, "How many objects are there in this world?" (p. 18). Putnam claims that the answer to this question is relative to the concepts which we use to take account of the objects. One possible way to answer this question is to say that there are simply three objects: xl, x2, and x3. A second possible way to answer the question is to say, that "for every two particulars there is an object which is their sum" (p. 18). Thus, the answer would be that there are seven objects: xl, x2, x3, xl +x2, xl +x3, x2 + x3, xl +x2 + x3. Putnam is arguing here that our concepts, which involve our interests, determine in some way how many objects there are in the world. 24 Putnam claims that the phenomenon of conceptual relativity "turns on the fact that . . . the notions of object and existence have a multitude of different uses rather than one absolute meaning" (p. 19). Again he says, "the idea that there is an Archimedean point, or a use of 'exist' inherent in the world itself, from which the question 'How many objects really exist?' makes sense, is an illusion" (p. 20). The multitude of different uses of the notions of object and existence will also depend on one's interests, and so it seems that one's interests determine how many objects really exist.25 Although the foregoing example, from The Many Faces of Realism, can be understood as a form of ontological relativism (what entities exist, and how they exist is relative to our conceptual schemes), the connections to ER seem to be direct. If what exists is dependent on a conceptual scheme, then our knowledge of what exists will be dependent on that conceptual scheme as well. There does not seem to be much of a distinction between a determination of what exists by means of a conceptual scheme, and one's knowledge of what exists. If one person claims that on their conceptual scheme there are n number of objects in the world, and another person claims that

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on their conceptual scheme there are n + m objects in the world, then it seems that these two people are claiming to know just how many objects there are in the world. Is Putnam's conceptual relativity (henceforth CR) similar to ER? Consider again the example of two individuals who are deciding how many objects there are in the world. The first person PI claims to know that according to her conceptual scheme Cl, there are n objects in the world. The second person P2 claims to know that according to her conceptual scheme C2, there are n + m objects in the world. For PI or P2 the knowledge that there are n or n + m objects in the world can only be established by reference to Cl or C2. If I am interpreting Putnam correctly here, then this fulfills the "standards" conjunct of Siegel's definition of ER, in which Cl, C2, or Cn, function as the standards by means of which a knowledge claim is established. Although Putnam's use of conceptual schemes fulfills the standards conjunct in the definition of ER, ER need not follow. Putnam also needs to affirm the no-neutrality conjunct of the definition. However, does Putnam's understanding of the standards conjunct as one in which conceptual schemes function as the standards for establishing knowledge claims necessitate an affirmation of the no-neutrality conjunct? It might, if Putnam were to maintain that given that knowledge claims are determined by conceptual schemes, and given that there are competing claims made from within different conceptual schemes, there can be no neutrality between them. However, Putnam need not maintain this point. Putnam might just be making the trivially relativistic point that the notion of objects is like the notion of measurement of distance between two points. For example, consider the following question: How far is it from Miami to Los Angeles? This question can be answered in a variety of ways, and the measurement of the distance from Miami to Los Angeles can be made in potentially infinitely many ways. For example, one might say that it is one "miala" from Miami to Los Angeles, or 3,000 miles, or 5,000 kilometers, or x stadia etc., . . . Thus, measurement of distance is dependent on one's interests. The interesting thing about measurements of distances, is that one can translate the one into the


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other. One can convert miles into kilometers, kilometers into stadia, stadia into "mialas." This can be done because no matter how one slices up the distance between the two cities, the distance itself, regardless of how it is measured, is fixed. Thus, the measurement of the distance from Miami to Los Angeles is relative to one's interests, but the distance itself is independent of any possible interests or conceptual schemes. Is Putnam's point about the relativity of the number of objects like the notion of the relativity of measurement between two points, or is Putnam saying something like the distance between two points is itself dependent on one's interests? That is, does the distance itself function as that which is neutral between competing conceptual schemes? Putnam's answer to this question can be found in his consideration of William James, from whom Putnam takes some of his ideas concerning conceptual relativity.26 James emphasizes that the interests of an observer must be taken into account when determining what is true about the way things are. Putnam states that according to James, "the public world we experience is not a 'ready-made' world . . . no single unique description is imposed upon us by non-human reality" (Putnam, 1996c, p. 14). Putnam disagrees with "James' suggestion that the world we know is to an indeterminate extent the product of our own minds" (Putnam, 1994, p. 448), and maintains that the "world is as it is independently of the interests of describers" (p. 448). However, Putnam claims that there is a "real insight in James' pragmatism, the insight that 'description' is never a mere copying and that we constantly add to the ways in which language can be responsible to reality. And this is the insight we must not throw away in our haste to recoil from James' unwise talk of our (partly) 'making up' the world" (Putnam, 1994, p. 449). Returning to the example of distances, Putnam would seem to agree that interests are relevant in determining how to measure distances between two points, but that the distance itself between two points is fixed independently of interests. To return to the questions at hand, does Putnam's conceptual relativity meet the standards conjunct in Siegel's definition of relativism? Yes. Does this imply an acceptance of the no-neutrality conjunct? It need not, but whether it does may

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depend on just Putnam means by "neutrality." Let us consider whether or not there are clear cases of Putnam's acceptance of the no-neutrality conjunct apart from whether or not it is implied by his affirmation of the standards conjunct. Does Putnam's epistemology also fulfill the "no neutrality" conjunct in the definition of ER? Putnam addresses this issue in a short essay which has as its central task to argue that criterial conceptions of rationality are fatally flawed, whether those criteria be absolute or relative. Putnam states, "In short, if it is true that only statements that can be criterially verified can be rationally acceptable, that statement itself cannot be criterially verified, and hence cannot be rationally acceptable" (Putnam, 1981d, p. 189). Putnam is not denying the possibility of rationality in philosophy. He is simply arguing that "we cannot appeal to public norms to decide what is and is not rationally argued and justified in philosophy" (p. 189).27 Thus, it is evident, that Putnam has in mind here something like Siegel's no neutrality condition. Concerning particular problems in philosophy, Putnam states, There is no neutral place, no neutral conception of rationality, from which to decide who is right. Even if one is neutral on this issue ... that isn't a neutral position either. One can't criterially verify that neither of us has reason on his side by appeal to ... cultural norms. In fact, both of us are trying to shape the futurecultural norm; so even if there were a culturally indoctrinated conception supporting one of us, that wouldn't convince the other (p. 190). This quotation clearly indicates that Putnam maintains the no neutrality condition in Siegel's definition of ER. Putnam makes this more explicit by stating, The correct moral to draw is not that nothing is right or wrong, rational or irrational, true or false, and so on, but, as I said before, that there is no neutral place to stand, no external vantage point from which to judge what is right or wrong, rational or irrational, true or false. But is this not relativism after all? (p. 203).


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With reference to the distinctions made above about neutrality, Putnam might mean two things by "there is no neutral place to stand." He might mean the relatively innocuous notion that there is no neutral place to stand with respect to all possible disputes; Putnam might be denying "globally neutral standards" but affirming that there are "locally neutral standards," i.e. standards which do not prejudice the contestants in a particular dispute. If this is what Putnam means, then the "no neutrality" conjunct for the definition of ER has not been met. However, if by "there is no neutral place to stand" Putnam means to deny local neutrality, that is to claim that there are no locally neutral standards by appeal to which competing knowledge claims can be fairly adjudicated, then the "no neutrality" condition has been met, and ER follows. I think that Putnam may mean something like the second understanding of neutrality. Consider the following quotation: Putnam states, "What we cannot say—because it makes no sense— is what the facts are independent of all conceptual choices" (Putnam, 1987b, p. 33) (Putnam's emphasis). The emphasis in this quotation, is on "independent." There is no independent, i.e. neutral, way to say what the facts are apart from various conceptual choices.28 Putnam means that different conceptual schemes give us different facts, and there is no independent, i.e. no locally neutral, way of determining which is correct. The example of different ways of determining "objects" is supposed to show that on one conceptual scheme it will be the case that there are n objects and on another conceptual scheme there will be n + m objects, and there is no (locally) neutral way of determining which way of counting is correct. This is why Putnam ends the quotation above by asking whether or not this amounts to relativism after all.29 However, Putnam claims that his conceptual relativity is not relativism (i.e. ER) after all.30 It is not relativism, because even though knowledge claims can only be evaluated with reference to the conceptual scheme one chooses (the standards conjunct) and there is no (local) neutrality between competing conceptual schemes (the no neutrality conjunct), relativism does not follow; there is an "ideal terminus" (Throop and Doran, p. 359) for inquiry. 31 There is, according to Putnam, ultimately a way of adjudicating between

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the competing conceptual-scheme-bound knowledge claims, and that is found in this "ideal terminus" of inquiry. But what exactly is this "ideal terminus"? Putnam provides an answer in his account of truth as idealized rational acceptability. Putnam's non-relativist ideas: truth as idealized rational acceptability

Since Putnam's conceptual relativity contains both the "standards" and "no neutrality" conjuncts of the definition of ER, then the problems with ER raised in the chapters above should also apply to conceptual relativity. However, Putnam claims that there is something which can act as a determinate arbiter between competing conceptual-scheme-bound knowledge claims. This is evident in the fifth feature of Putnam's epistemology: the idea that, "Some views are objectively better than others." How can some views be objectively better if a) evaluations of all views are internal to conceptual schemes, and b) there is no neutral place from which to judge between any two evaluations of different views? Putnam's claim that "some views are objectively better" can only be made because Putnam thinks that there is something that is neutral between competing views. It was indicated above that Putnam defines truth as rational acceptability. However, in order to make sense of how some views can be objectively better than others, Putnam makes the stronger claim that truth is not just rational acceptability (a relativistic claim), but rather idealizedrational acceptability. Putnam states, "Truth is an idealization of rational acceptability" where rational acceptability is "relative to a person" (Putnam, 1981a, p. 55). Putnam's understanding of truth as idealized rational acceptability contains an interesting dichotomy. On the one hand Putnam claims that statements are true independently of conceptual schemes (language games, cultures, traditions or whatever). He states, In my view . . . we do have a notion of truth . . . and in my view truth is a property of many of the sentences we utter and write—a characteristic we want those sentences to have when we are not


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trying to deceive each other (or ourselves). If asked why I hold on to this idea . . . I would answer that we can recognize many clear cases of truth, as well as of falsity. It is true that sugar is soluble, true that philosophy is hard, true that all men are mortal; and false that there were men living on the moon in 1914, false that most women are fickle, false that children always do what one wants them to do (Putnam, 1991, p. 265). In addition, Putnam states very clearly that, "[S]ome of our sentences are true, and . . . the truth of'I had cereal for breakfast this morning' does depend on what happened this morning" (Putnam, 1993a, p. 302). 32 So, truth is independent from the conceptual schemes of speakers or inquirers, according to Putnam, in the sense that what is true is not determined solely by the conceptual scheme one has. On the other hand, Putnam claims (as was shown in the mereological sums example above) that the existence of objects are, in some way, dependent on conceptual schemes, and so truths about them must also be dependent on conceptual schemes.33 This dichotomy between the independence of truth from conceptual schemes, on the one hand, and the dependence of truth on conceptual schemes, on the other hand, is evident when Putnam states the following: "Accepting the ubiquity of conceptual relativity does not require us to deny that truth genuinely depends on the 'antics' of things distant from the speaker, but the nature of the dependence changes as the kinds of language games we invent changes" (Putnam, 1992b, p. 435). Truth is in one way independent of conceptual schemes, but in another way not. Putnam's idealisation of truth is what is supposed to move the relativistic claim of truth as rational acceptability into nonrelativism. What sense can be made of this notion of idealization? It seems that Putnam thinks of idealization as a way of transcending all conceptual schemes, and something against which all conceptual schemes are ultimately judged; it is this idea of "reality" which does in fact determine in an ideal sense, which conceptualscheme-bound claims are true or false. Putnam maintains that there "is a transcendental reality. . .one absolutely independent of

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our minds .. . [and] the regulative ideal of knowledge is to copy or put our thoughts in 'correspondence' with it" (Putnam, 1981c, p. 226). However, in the progress of Putnam's writings, the same dichotomy about truth is present. Putnam explains, "It is true that a knowledge claim is responsible to reality, and in most cases, that means a reality independent of the speaker. But reflection on human experience suggests that neither the form of all knowledge claims nor the ways in which they are responsible to reality is fixed once and for all in advance" (Putnam, 1994, p. 449). What he means is that reality, in some way, transcends all conceptual schemes and is the ultimate arbiter in any competition between conceptual schemes. But, reality, and in turn truths about that reality, are not totally determined independently of individuals who make those claims, because according to Putnam, "objects" and things that exist, as indicated in the example of mereological sums above, are determined by the concepts that individuals use. In another place, this dichotomy is also evident in our understanding of reason. Putnam indicates that there are two aspects to reason, an internal to conceptual scheme aspect, and an external to conceptual scheme aspect which regulates the former. Putnam states, "Reason is both immanent (not to be found outside of concrete language games and institutions) and transcendent (a regulative idea that we use to criticize the conduct of all activities and institutions)" (Putnam, 1981b, p. 234). Putnam does not say exactly how the latter regulates the former, but, given what he has just said about the nature of reality being that which determines in some way our knowledge claims, this claim about reason might be understood in that sense. Putnam introduces the notion of truth as the idealization of rational acceptability to make sense of these dichotomies. In a discussion of how to make sense of different conceptions of rationality (the point of this quotation can be made whether the discussion is about different conceptions of truth or knowledge or justice or whatever) Putnam states, "The very fact that we speak of our different conceptions [of rationality] as different conceptions of rationality posits aGrenzbegriff, a limit-concept of the ideal truth" (Putnam, 1981a, p. 216).


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Different conceptions of rationality, truth, justice, knowledge, the good life, or whatever, are all different conceptions of those things,and although those things obtain, in part, their determinate features from conceptual schemes, they are, in fact, independent of all conceptual schemes. Although this independence may not be fully known or the aspects of it understood, it is an ideal terminus toward which our inquiry proceeds. Let me summarize how Putnam uses the notion of truth as idealized rational acceptability to get around the difficulties of relativism that he faces by maintaining the two conjuncts of ER. According to Putnam, what we have are, first, individual inquirers for whom the rational acceptability of their beliefs is relative to their conceptual schemes. This meets the standards conjunct of the definition of ER. Second, there is some sense of no neutrality between competing conceptual schemes. Third, given various competing conceptual-scheme-bound knowledge claims, and given that we may not in fact have complete resolution to competing conceptual scheme-bound conflicts, there is, in fact, an ideal terminus toward which those conflicts can move. This ideal terminus functions as a neutral arbiter in epistemic disputes. Putnam's claim is that it is this ideal terminus toward which inquiry moves that keeps his epistemology from amounting to ER.34 Once Putnam gives his description of our epistemic situation as one which contains the notion of truth as idealized rationality, he immediately faces a major difficulty. Putnam's description is only one among many (potentially infinite?) alternative descriptions of our epistemic situation. Putnam is claiming that, from within his conceptual scheme, our epistemic situation has as its central feature the notion of truth as idealized rational acceptability. However, there may be a conceptual scheme on which it is false that our epistemic situation has as its central feature the notion of truth as idealized rational acceptability. Remember Putnam's favorite example of mereological sums as alternative descriptions of how many objects there are in the world. If we simply replace objects with our epistemic situation as that which is being described, then just as in the case of multiple ways of

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describing objects, there will be multiple ways of describing our epistemic situation. The question becomes, why should we choose Putnam's description, based on Putnam's conceptual scheme, of our epistemic situation over and above any other description based on a different conceptual scheme? Putnam might answer that his description of our epistemic situation is more pragmatically useful than any other. But then one must ask, isn't that description of pragmatic usefulness just one particular conception of our epistemic condition among many? The problem for Putnam is that his own description of our epistemic situation as one which involves truth as idealized rational acceptability seems to be an absolute account, one that applies to all conceptual schemes, even to the ones in which, according to that conceptual scheme, it is false that our epistemic situation involves truth as idealized rational acceptability. This appears to be an absolute account of our epistemic situation, in the sense of "absolutes" which Putnam clearly rejects (Putnam, 1981d, pp. 203—4). If Putnam denies local neutrality, then it is inconsistent to maintain that truth as idealized rational acceptability can function as a locally neutral standard, since there are none.35 If Putnam simply denies global neutrality, then truth as idealized rational acceptability can only function as a locally neutral and not a globally neutral standard. But, Putnam's account of truth as idealized rational acceptability sounds very much like the globally neutral positions which Putnam clearly rejects. Putnam can be consistent only if he denies global neutrality, accepts local neutrality and maintains that truth as idealized rational acceptability functions only as a locally neutral standard by means of which epistemic disputes can be adjudicated. 36 Maclntyre and Rorty also recognize this kind of tension, and it is to their criticisms I now turn.


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Maclntyre and Rorty on Putnam's relativistic tensions

Maclntyre and Rorty present a major criticism of Putnam's epistemology which centers around Putnam's identification of truth with idealized rational acceptability. These philosophers claim that there is an inconsistency in Putnam's epistemology. It is inconsistent for Putnam to maintain both that truth (or knowledge or rationality) is idealized warranted acceptability, and that truth (or knowledge or rationality) is internal to conceptual schemes. Maclntyre presents the objection in the following way: [A]n understanding of any reality, in relation to which truth and falsity . . . are judged, must be internal to our web of concepts and beliefs . . . so runs . . . Hilary Putnam's rejection of what he calls "external realism" (see . . . Putnam, Reason Truth and History [Putnam, 198la]). It is characteristic of those who adopt this view that almost always in practice and often enough in avowed theory they treat the concept of truth as nothing more than an idealization of the concept of warranted assertibility (Maclntyre, 1988, p. 169). Maclntyre continues: A key word in the formulation of this kind of internalism in respect to truth and reality is "we." The assumption underlying its use is that there is one and only one overall community of enquiry, sharing substantially one and the same set of concepts and beliefs (p. 169). There are two primary reasons which Maclntyre offers to think that the notion that truth is idealized warranted assertibility implies one overall community of enquiry. First, he states that "the notion of idealization invoked has never been given adequate content" (Maclntyre, 1998d, p. 206). Maclntyre's worry is that since justification is contingent on time and place and internal to conceptual schemes, it is unlikely that an "idealized" or "once for

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all" version of justification can make sense of the "ultimate terminus of enquiry" (p. 206). Second, he recognizes that within a particular group of enquirers ("traditions" in Maclntyre's terms and "conceptual schemes" in Putnam's terms) "what constitutes an idealization of rational justification will also be specific and idiosyncratic to the standpoint of that particular tradition" (p. 206), and this is, according to Maclntyre, inconsistent. In other words, if one maintains that knowledge is relative to conceptual schemes, then knowledge of just what counts as idealization of rational justification is also relative to a tradition or conceptual scheme. Therefore, given a competing account of what counts as the idealization of rational justification, there is no neutral way to determine which account is correct. The difficulty is that if Putnam maintains that there is some kind of idealized rational acceptability, and that all truth or knowledge is internal to conceptual schemes, then whatever form of idealized rational acceptability one considers will be idealized rational acceptability only for some conceptual scheme. Thus, there will be a multiplicity of accounts of idealized rational acceptability, each tagged to a particular conceptual scheme, but this is no longer an absolutely idealized notion of rational acceptability. According to Maclntyre, Putnam cannot have it both ways. Maclntyre might suggest that Putnam drop the notion of idealization and focus instead, as Maclntyre has done, on the interaction of conceptual schemes (traditions in Maclntyre's language) and accept Maclntyre's account of how one conceptual scheme can be superior to another. However, this route would be open to the criticisms raised in the previous chapter. While Rorty presents the same difficulty for Putnam as Maclntyre, there are quite a few things on which Rorty and Putnam agree. Rorty lists five key points on which he agrees with Putnam: (I) The mind cannot map a language-independent world, since human interest penetrates "reality" so deeply.37 (II) Although our view of the world always reflects our interests, some views of the world and some interests are "better" than others. (Ill) Interest relativity does not mean non-objectivity, rather it means nonabsoluteness, since according to Putnam "It can be objective that


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an interpretation or an explanation is the correct one, given the interests which are relevant in the context" (Rorty, 1998, p. 43). (IV) There is a "supremacy of the agent point of view," which means that "we must take a certain point of view, use a certain 'conceptual system' [Putnam, 1987b, p. 83]" (p. 44). (V) Since knowledge claims are relative to conceptual schemes (ethne in Rortian terms, as will be shown below), knowledge does not converge into "one big picture." I would add a sixth element of agreement: (VI) Relativism is self-refuting.38 In spite of these agreements with Putnam, Rorty levels one major criticism (similar to Maclntyre's criticism) against Putnam, centering on item (V) on the list above. While Maclntyre simply seems to point out the difficulty, Rorty tries to solve it. Rorty tries to rid Putnam of his lingering hope that somehow we will, at the end of the day (the final day of inquiry), in some way get things right. Putnam, according to Rorty, wrongly allows there to be some sort of transcendental standard (idealized rational acceptability) which will vindicate or fail to vindicate human inquiry. Rorty indicates that when Putnam argues against relativism he invariably appeals to "the notion of a universal transcultural rationality" (Rorty, 199la, pp. 26—7). While Rorty agrees with Putnam's claim that "we can only hope to produce a more rational conception of rationality . . . if we operate from within our tradition" (Putnam, 1981, p. 216), Rorty disagrees over the nature of the possibility of some conception of rationality and knowledge independent of all conceptual schemes. Rorty states: Putnam goes on to pose a further question: "Does this dialogue [i.e. enquiry within and between traditions] have an ideal terminus? Is there a true conception of rationality . . . even if all we ever have are our conceptions of these?" [Putnam, 1981, p. 216] I do not see the point of this question. Putnam suggests that a negative answer—the view that "there is only dialogue"—is just another form of self-refuting relativism. But, once again, I do not see how a claim that something does not exist can be construed as a claim that something is relative to something else. In the final sentence of his book, Putnam says that "The very fact that we

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speak of our different conceptions as different conceptions of rationality posits a Grenzbegriff, a limit-concept of ideal truth." But what is such a posit supposed to do, except to say that from God's point of view the human race is heading in the right direction? Surely Putnam's "internalism" should forbid him to say anything like that (Rorty, 199la, p. 27). The inconsistency is to maintain both that all knowledge claims are established internally to conceptual schemes and that there is an ideal terminus for all conceptual schemes. When this claim is made, it is true only within Putnam's conceptual scheme. At this point Rorty accuses Putnam of sliding "back into the scientism he rightly condemns in others. For the root of scientism, defined as the view that rationality is a matter of applying criteria, is the desire for objectivity, the hope that what Putnam calls 'human flourishing' has a transhistorical nature" (Rorty, 199la, p. 27). Rorty pinpoints the difficulty for Putnam in the following quotation: "The problem for Putnam is that he must both maintain his anticonvergence thesis [(V) above] and make sense of the notion of 'truth as idealized rational acceptability.' He has invoked the latter notion as a defense against my evil twin, 'the Relativist,' for years" (Rorty, 1998, p. 51). The tension is that Putnam cannot maintain both that knowledge is internal to conceptual schemes, and that truth is idealized rational acceptability. To repeat, the difficulty pointed out by Maclntyre and Rorty is Putnam's notion of truth as idealized rational acceptability. The problem is presumably with the "idealized" part of the phrase. Rorty and Maclntyre understand Putnam to mean by "idealized" some absolute epistemic standpoint independent from all, and neutral between, conceptual schemes. Putnam's difficulty here is that an idealized community would seem to be independent of any conceptual schemes and (presumably) neutral between competing conceptual schemes, both of which Putnam has claimed to be impossible. Maclntyre and Rorty see this notion as Putnam's way of sneaking in a "God's-eye point of view" which all three of them reject. The tensions which Putnam faces from Rorty's and Maclntyre's


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criticism might be alleviated in two ways. One way is to jettison the "internal" part of Putnam's internal realism. This seems unlikely, since this is perhaps the key feature of Putnam's epistemology, and the point of major agreement between Putnam, Rorty, and Maclntyre. The other way is to jettison the notion of truth as "idealized" rational acceptability. Rorty does just this and has a seemingly consistent view. But does Putnam's acceptance of idealized rationality amount to the same thing as there being a "God's eye view" of rationality? It might, if Putnam were to claim that an idealized rational acceptability had specific features that could be used as formal criteria for adjudicating any conflict between competing conceptual schemes. But Putnam does not give such an account. He simply maintains that there is some goal of idealized rational acceptability. We may not yet have it, but we are working toward it. This claim is, as Putnam maintains, true internal to Putnam's conceptual scheme. But, according to Putnam, the truth of some questions is determined in part by the conceptual scheme one has, and so on another conceptual scheme, Putnam's claim will be false, and the person with that conceptual scheme must reject Putnam's account of idealized rational acceptability. But, Putnam's claim about idealized rational acceptability appears to be, according to Putnam a claim that applies to all conceptual schemes, regardless of whether or not the conceptual schemes to which it applies accept it or not, and thus we seem to have a universal truth independent of all conceptual schemes. Rorty tries to push Putnam to be consistent, and thus lead Putnam to admit that his view is the same as Rorty's ethnocentric view. (Rorty's ethnocentrism will be addressed in the next chapter.) If Putnam rejects truth as "idealized rational acceptability" then he will be able, with Rorty, to identify '"idealized rational acceptability' with 'acceptability to us at our best'" (Rorty, 1998, p. 52). Rorty indicates that this is exactly what he "had in mind when I [Rorty] said that pragmatists should be ethnocentrists rather than relativists" (p. 52). Rorty suggests that Putnam get out of this inconsistency by,

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[moving] everything over from epistemology and metaphysics to cultural politics, from claims to knowledge and appeals to selfevidence to suggestions about what we should try. This seems to me just the strategy one would want to adopt if one were a pragmatist in a sense contextually defined by (I)—(V). But Putnam does not adopt it, and I honestly do not see why he does not. At the last moment, it seems to me, he turns intuitionist (p. 57) .39 Must Putnam go the route of ethnocentrism and cultural politics? Jennifer Case has argued that Rorty's argument that Putnam's position leads to Rortian ethnocentrism is fallacious because it is question begging. Rorty's argument "begs the question against the possibility of making sense of the notion of idealized rational acceptability without reference to an ideal community" (Case, 1995, p. 177).40 \Vhat Putnam needs to do, and according to Case, is proceeding to do (Case identifies this as an ongoing project for Putnam) is to make sense of this very notion. Case is correct in stating that Rorty's view does beg the question against Putnam. Putnam himself claims that he is continuing his "search for a middle way between reactionary metaphysics and irresponsible relativism" (Putnam, 1994, p. 447). While Putnam may not be forced into accepting Rortian ethnocentrism, the tension in his work remains. Without an adequate account of how idealized rational acceptability is consistent with Putnam's conceptual relativity, the use of this notion to escape the difficulties faced by Putnam's conceptual relativity, difficulties which are generated because conceptual relativity is relevantly similar to ER, will fail.

Conclusion

Although Putnam is strongly against ER and offers arguments that defeat ER, depending upon how one interprets Putnam, his own epistemology may not be immune from the very difficulties he

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criticizes in relativism. Putnam clearly holds to the standards conjunct of the definition of ER, but it is not clear in what sense he holds to the no neutrality conjunct. In addition, Putnam claims that his own view does not amount to ER, due to his account of truth as idealized rational acceptability. However, his claim that his own view does not amount to ER due to his account of truth as idealized rational acceptability hinges upon whether or not Putnam holds to the no neutrality conjunct of ER. In Chapter 2, the distinction was made between "global" and "local" neutrality. In the discussion of that distinction it was determined that the relativist who accepts the no neutrality conjunct of ER will reject both global and local neutrality, but one might reject global neutrality and accept local neutrality without falling into the difficulties of ER. Putnam clearly rejects global neutrality, but it is difficult to tell from his writings whether he also rejects local neutrality. If he does reject local neutrality, then he is inconsistent to claim that his view of truth as idealized rational acceptability is the right way to understand our epistemic situation. This is just as inconsistent as the relativist's claim that there is no locally neutral way to adjudicate between competing knowledge claims while also maintaining that relativism is the right way to understand this epistemic situation. If Putnam simply means to reject global neutrality and accept local neutrality, then idealized rational acceptability may function as Putnam's locally neutral arbiter in epistemic disputes. Thus, Putnam's epistemology will not amount to ER. However, there still remains a difficulty for Putnam pointed out by both Maclntyre and Rorty. Assuming Putnam's acceptance of local neutrality, it is a given that Putnam a) rejects global neutrality, b) accepts the standards conjunct in the definition of ER by means of acceptance of the idea that knowledge claims are made only from within conceptual schemes and c) defends truth as idealized rational acceptability. Given these things, barring any account of how conflicts between alternative understandings of our epistemic situation which differ from Putnam's account can be locally neutrally evaluated, Putnam must provide an account of how his understanding of our epistemic situation is better than other

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accounts, i.e. better in a locally neutral way.41 Recognition of this

difficulty presented by Maclntyre and Rorty does not mean that I accept either Maclntyre's or Rorty's way of getting Putnam around this difficulty. While Maclntyre has a story to tell about how various traditions can interact and overcome one another in order to solve stalemates in the well-defined problematics of their respective lines of inquiry, I have shown in the previous chapter that Maclntyre's own way around the difficulty pointed out in Putnam's work is itself not without difficulty. While Rorty advocates a consistent relativism qua ethnocentrism, I will argue in the next chapter that there are substantial difficulties with this approach.

Notes

1.

There are, I believe, elements of his conceptual relativity latent in his 1975 paper "The Meaning of 'Meaning'" as well. This is evident when he says things like the following (emphasis added): Traditional semantic theory leaves out only two contributions to the determination of extension—the contribution of society and the contribution of the real world! (Putnam, 1975, p. 245). Extension [of a term] may be determined socially, in many cases (p. 246). The grotesquely mistaken views of language which are and always have been current reflect two specific and very central philosophical tendencies: the tendency to treat cognition as a purely individual matter and the tendency to ignore the world, insofar as it consists of more than the individual's "observations." Ignoring the division of linguistic labor is ignoring the social dimension of cognition] ignoring what we have called the indexicality of most words is ignoring the contribution of the environment. Traditional philosophy of language, like much traditional philosophy, leaves out other people and the world; a better philosophy and a better science of language must encompass both (p. 271). In Putnam's introduction to a compilation of essays that have been written in response to his "Meaning of'Meaning' " paper, he states:


2. 3. 4. 5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10. 11.

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Knowing the meaning of the word "gold" or the word "elm" is not a matter of knowing that at all, but a matter of knowing how] and what you have to know how is to play your part in an intricate system of social cooperation. Language, I said is not a tool like a hammer, that anyone can use by him—or herself. It is a tool like a large ship, which it takes many people working together to operate. I can refer to gold, talk about gold, purchase gold, etc., perfectly well without being able reliably to distinguish gold from non-gold because there are others in the community—experts— upon whom I can rely. In short there is a linguistic division of labor (Putnam, 1996a, p. xvi). See also Beam, 1985, pp. 391—3, for a similar summary of this argument. For an additional brief summary of Putnam's use of this type of argument against relativism, see Maitra, 2003, pp. 42—3. See also Johnson, 1991, p. 341. One might want to ask, what factors are those exactly? Are they themselves "relative" to a conceptual scheme etc? It seems that the threat of an infinite regress may be lurking here. This is similar to what has been called "Midas Touch" epistemology (Willard, 1993), which refers to a rather mysterious way in which our language reaches out, touches, and changes the objects it is about. This example was inspired by Paul Churchland's discussion of eliminative materialism in the philosophy of mind. See Churchland, 1988. This point was made above in Chapter 1 (ER is self-defeating), and is simply a reiteration of Plato's argument that epistemological relativism is self-defeating. Putnam has in mind here Michel Foucault, and he also mentions Althusser, Lacan, and Deleuze. A complete analysis of these philosophers' positions is beyond the scope of this work, and while it is possible that Putnam has misinterpreted Foucault (et al.) in what follows, I am assuming that Putnam has interpreted Foucault correctly. This applies equally to Susan Haack's argument below. This argument was presented to me in a logic seminar lecture by Susan Haack, University of Miami, spring, 1998. Putnam states, "Truth, in the only sense in which we have a vital and working notion of it, is rational acceptability (or, rather, rational acceptability under sufficiently good epistemic conditions; and which conditions are epistemically better or worse is relative to the type of

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discourse in just the way rational acceptability itself is)" (Putnam, 1981b, p. 231). 12. Three very different contemporary epistemologists are in agreement that the notion of justification includes an element of truth indicativeness. See Haack, 1993, pp. 81—9 for a "foundherentist" understanding of justification involving evidence for a beliefs being true, Goldman, 1986, p. 3, and Bonjour, 1985, p. 8. 13. Putnam gives the following example: To spell this out, suppose R.R., a cultural relativist, says When Karl says "Schnee ist weiss", what Karl means (whether he knows it or not) is that snow is white as determined by the norms of Karl's culture (which we now take to be German culture). Now the sentence "Snow is white is determined by the norms of German culture" is itself one which R.R. has to use, not just mention, to say what Karl says. On his own account, what R.R. means by this sentence is "Snow is white as determined by the norms of German culture" is true by the norms of R.R's culture, (which we take to be American culture). Substituting this back into the first displayed utterance (and changing to indirect quotation) yields: When Karl says "Schnee ist weiss", what he means (whether he knows it or not) is that it is true as determined by the norms of American culture that it is true as determined by the norms of German culture that snow is white. In general, if R.R. understands every utterance p that he uses as meaning "it is true by the norms of American culture that p", then he must understand his own hermeneutical utterances, the utterances he uses to interpret others, the same way . . . Other cultures become, so to speak, logical constructions out of the procedures and practices of American culture (Putnam, 1981b, p. 237) (Putnam's emphasis). 14. When the relativist says that in her culture, the concept of truth is "xyz," then her claim will be true only in her culture, which is itself problematic as shown in the analysis of the general difficulties with relativism in Chapters 1 and 2, but if the relativist makes the additional claim that the concept of truth in the second person's culture is "xyz," then the claim that the concept of truth in the second person's culture is "xyz" will only be true in the relativist's culture.


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15. Throop and Doran interpret Putnam as claiming that what is actually true is in part a function of the conceptual system one adopts. 16. "Re-formed" here is ambiguous between change and improvement. I assume that Putnam means the latter. 17. In what follows, it may be objected that the criticisms of Putnam's views that I present are overly focused on "metaphysical" issues and thus have little or no bearing on epistemological ones. The reason that certain metaphysical issues will be the focus of this section of this chapter is that these metaphysical issues are those on which the epistemological ones rest. Putnam himself recognizes that there is a deep connection between metaphysical and epistemological issues of his "internal realism." He states: Of course, from my point of view the "epistemological" and the "ontological" are intimately related. Truth and reference are intimately connected with epistemic notions; the open texture of the notion of an object, the open texture of the notion of reference, the open texture of the notion of meaning, and the open texture of reason itself are all interconnected. It is from these interconnections that serious philosophical work on these notions must proceed (Putnam, 1988, p. 120). 18. See Case, 2001, p. 418. 19. See (Putnam, 1992b, p. 435), (Putnam 1993a, p. 309), and (Putnam, 1996b, p. 162). Putnam argues forcefully against what he calls a "metaphysical realist" view of a correspondence theory of truth. This view is one in which the totality of objects in the world determines a unique relation to the bearers of truth. 20. See also Putnam, 1978, p. 107, and Putnam, 1988, p. 114. 21. See also, Putnam, 1981c, p. 226. This point coincides with the second and fifth features of Putnam's epistemology, listed above. One difficulty here is that if "the standards of rational acceptability may themselves be culturally or historically variable" then "it seems to reopen the door to a form of historical relativism" (Matthews, 1983, p. 116). 22. See also Putnam, 1988, p. 109. 23. This type of example is found throughout Putnam's work (Putnam, 1988, Chapter 4; 1992a, p. 120; 1993a, p. 309; 1994, p. 450; and 2004, pp. 33—51). I believe it is a central one that must be addressed when evaluating the coherence of Putnam's internal realism. See also Throop and Doran, 1991, p. 360, for this same point. 24. For Putnam, interests are an individual's conceptual preferences

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which constitute the conceptual scheme that one uses. See Putnam, 1996c for Putnam's brief discussion of his understanding of William James' use of the notion of interests in determining what and how many things exist. 25. One might understand Putnam to be making a completely trivial point about the notion of an object; concepts can be used to refer to infinitely many objects in the world, and so the notion of a fixed number of objects in the world is false. Even if this is the only point that Putnam is making (which seems doubtful since he makes it quite frequently in his writings and places a heavy emphasis on it for his account of conceptual relativity), it still seems to meet the standards conjunct of the definition of relativism given above. If it does meet that conjunct, and if Putnam also maintains the no neutrality conjunct, then Putnam's epistemology faces the difficulties of relativism raised above. One way that Putnam's use of mereological sums to display the notion of conceptual relativity would fail to entail relativism would be if it were incoherent. Panu Raatikainen (Raatikainen, 2001) claims that Putnam's use of mereology fails to distinguish between the language of mereology and the existence of mereological sums; one might choose to use the language of mereology without there being any such mereological sums. If this line of criticism works, then Putnam's project cannot succeed. I will assume that Putnam might respond by simply claiming that the conceptual work of the mind creates in some way the order of the mereological sums that we do find. His clearest case for this is in the illustration of spilled beans presented by William James (Putnam, 1996c, p. 13). 26. Putnam presents an example from James (similar to Putnam's "objects" example above) as it is given in a letter to one of James' critics, Dickinson S. Miller. This Jamesian example is similar to Putnam's examples of conceptual relativity. James states: The world per se may be likened to a cast of beans on a table. By themselves they spell nothing. An onlooker may group them as he likes. He may simply count them all and map them. He may select groups and name these capriciously, or name them to suit certain extrinsic purposes of his. Whatever he does, so long as he takes account of them, his account is neither false nor irrelevant. If neither, why not call it true? It fits the heans-minus-him, and expresses the total fact of beans-^/z«-him. Truth in this total sense is partially ambiguous, then. If he simply counts or maps, he obeys a


27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

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subjective interest as much as if he traces figures. Let that stand for pure "intellectual" treatment of the beans, while grouping them variously stands for non-intellectual interest. All that . . . I contend for is that there is no "truth" without some interest, and that nonintellectual interests play a part as well as the intellectual ones. Whereupon we are accused of denying the beans, or denying being in any way constrained by them! It's too silly! . . . ((James' letter to Dickinson S. Miller, dated August 5, 1907, in Letters of William James, Volume 2 (Boston: Atlantic Monthly, 1920)), Putnam, 1996c, p. 13). Although it may be important to know if Putnam has got James right, in what follows, I will assume that Putnam has got James right. By "Public norms" Putnam simply means some public criterion or criteria of evaluation which is independent from a conceptual scheme, or neutral between conceptual schemes. Putnam gives as an example of such criteria being criteria which "can be verified to be correct . . . or to be highly successful science" (Putnam, 1981d, p. 184). But the question becomes, how is evaluation made, including evaluation of Putnam's own position? Putnam would claim that it is made by some "private" (i.e. "private" to a conceptual scheme) norm. If I am wrong about this, and if all Putnam means is simply a denial of a perspectiveless perspective (i.e. a denial of "global" neutrality), then of course the definition of ER will not be met, and Putnam's epistemology will be free from the problems of ER raised above. But, even if the "no neutrality" condition of the definition of ER is not met, Putnam's epistemology may not be free from difficulties, as I will demonstrate below, using arguments from Maclntyre and Rorty. Joseph Margolis (Margolis, 2000, pp. 211 and 213-14) believes that this type of affirmation made by Putnam (Putman, 1992a, p. 120) and Rorty may lead to relativism, in at least some areas of human inquiry. Whether this is so, will be considered below. Putnam clearly states that his view has "nothing to do with cultural relativism. And it certainly does not claim that genuinely incompatible theories can be true" (Putnam, 2001, p. 436). From this point on, I will assume that Putnam does embrace the no neutrality conjunct. If he does, I think that despite his efforts to maintain that some kind of ideal terminus to inquiry keeps his views from becoming relativistic, relativism still follows. In another place, concerning the independence of truth, Putnam states, "If we take 'truth' as our representative intentional notion,

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33.

34. 35. 36.

37.

Relativism in Contemporary American Philosophy then to say that truth is objective . . . is just to say that it is a property of truth that whether a sentence is true is logically independent of whether a majority of the members of the culture believe it to be true" (Putnam, 1988, p. 109). In this passage Putnam makes it clear that by "objective" he does not mean "independent of what human beings know or could find out" (p. 109). This has to do with the fact that, as indicated above in the example of mereological sums, Putnam thinks that things "distant from speakers," being the things they are, are dependent upon speakers. This may be one way of understanding Putnam to deny the no neutrality conjunct in the definition of ER. However, if Putnam does not deny local neutrality, then ER does not follow. For a criticism of Putnam's position by an advocate of relativism, see Margolis, 2002, p. 153. Margolis claims that if our cognitive abilities determine the world, in the way that Putnam maintains, then there may be cases in which certain "divergences" between cognitive abilities (i.e. divergences in standards of epistemic evaluation) contain "epistemic incommensurabilities that could not be expected to conform to the terms of Putnam's translational pluralism." While I agree that Margolis has correctly pointed out a tension in Putnam's work on this subject, I do not agree with Margolis' conclusion that Putnam's failure (to hold conceptual relativity and some form of realism together) implies that Putnam's arguments against relativism also fail. Rorty states, "A pragmatist must also insist (with . . . Putnam . . .) that there is no such thing as the way the thing is in itself, under no description, apart from any use to which human beings might want to put it" (Rorty, 1991b, p. 4). Rorty agrees with Putnam that "the notion of'object' [is] relative to language" (Rorty, 1992, p. 415). Rorty also states, "I agree with Hilary Putnam that 'elements of what we call "language" or "mind" penetrate so deeply into what we call "reality" that the very project of representing ourselves as being "mappers" of something "language-independent" is fatally compromised from the start. Like Relativism, Realism is an impossible attempt to view the world from Nowhere' [Putnam, 1987a, p. 28]" (Rorty, 1998, pp. 67-8). See also Rorty, 1998, p. 90, for this same point of agreement between the two.


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38. See Rorty, 1991a, p. 23, and Putnam, 1981a, p. I l l , for each philosopher's claim that relativism is self-refuting. 39. See Forster, 1992, for a detailed analysis of this point as well as a summary of the agreement between Putnam and Rorty. 40. By "ideal community" Case means some "specifiable class of individuals" (p. 176) for whom rational acceptability is idealized. 41. Of course, Putnam cannot do so if he rejects local neutrality. If he rejects local neutrality, and since all knowledge claims are internal to conceptual schemes, then any account of idealized rational acceptability will also be internal to a conceptual scheme, and given any competing account to Putnam's idealized rational acceptability, Putnam's own claim cannot be considered superior or right as compared to any competing explanation.

Chapter 5

Relativistic Tensions in Rorty's "Epistemology"

"This charge of relativism is hard to shake off.' (Rorty, 1998, p. 2)

Introduction

Like Maclntyre and Putnam, Richard Rorty claims to find some insight into epistemological relativism while at the same time denying that his views succumb to the problems of ER. In this chapter, three things will be accomplished. First, I will examine various features of Rorty's views about knowledge in order to show that they meet the definition of ER. Second, I will indicate why Rorty thinks that his views of epistemology do not imply ER and its problems. Third, I will consider several criticisms of Rorty's views, raised by both Maclntyre and Putnam. I will argue that Rorty's views on epistemology are self-defeating and incoherent.

Rorty's views on epistemology

If epistemology is defined as a theory of knowledge, then according to Rorty, he does not have an epistemology. If epistemology means a position, view or opinion about knowledge, then Rorty does have an epistemology. The questions that have motivated philosophers throughout the ages to inquire about the nature of knowledge are, according to Rorty, both misguided and hopeless. The time has

Relativistic Tensions in Rorty's "Epistemology" 125

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come to change the subject.1 Theories of knowledge are useless; they are impractical. According to Rorty, theories of knowledge do not help us respond to reality in ways that are as successful as mere positions about knowledge, positions which help us cope. A position or view of epistemology does not commit one to maintaining that there is any essential structure or nature to knowledge or truth toward which a theory of knowledge is directed. Rather, a position about epistemology is simply a way of describing epistemological practices that are actually undertaken by various groups of inquirers. Why does Rorty want to change the subject from epistemology as a theory of knowledge to epistemology as something else? In his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Rorty, 1979), he indicates that three of the philosophers after whom he has modeled his work, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Dewey, "have alternative 'theories of knowledge' . . . They set aside epistemology and metaphysics as possible disciplines" (Rorty, 1979, p. 6) (Rorty's emphasis). Rorty states that his purpose in this book is to get his readers to set aside the theory of knowledge as well. He intends to "undermine the reader's confidence in ... 'knowledge' as something about which there ought to be a 'theory' " (p. 7). In his Consequences of Pragmatism (Rorty, 1982), Rorty advocates abandoning the kinds of questions that have been asked in the discipline of philosophy. Since there has been nothing interesting to say about truth throughout the history of philosophy since Plato, Rorty sees "the Platonic tradition as having outlived its usefulness." He does not think we should ask those questions anymore. When they [people with whom Rorty agrees] suggest that we not ask questions about the nature of Truth and Goodness, they do not invoke a theory about the nature of reality or knowledge or man which says that "there is no such thing" as Truth or Goodness. Nor do they have a "relativistic" or "subjectivist" theory of Truth or Goodness. They would simply like to change the subject (Rorty, 1982, p. xiv).

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Rorty indicates his purpose for dropping a pursuit of the nature of knowledge and truth in his Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity(Rorty, 1989). He states, "The nature of truth" is an unprofitable topic, resembling in this respect "the nature of man" and "the nature of God," and different from "the nature of the positron," and "the nature of Oedipal fixation." But this claim about relative profitability, in turn, is just the recommendation that we in fact say little about these topics, and see how we get on (Rorty, 1989, p. 8). Rorty is very interested in seeing how we get on with life once we have given up time and energy in pursuing these putatively useless questions about the nature of truth and knowledge. Rorty's task throughout his major writings is to change the subject, to cast off the old ways of thinking, to take up new ones, and to see what happens. If Rorty is changing the subject from epistemology as a theory of knowledge and the nature of truth, then to what subject does he shift the conversation? Rorty uses the terms "solidarity" and "ethnocentrism" to express this social understanding of knowledge as that to which he wants to turn the conversation regarding epistemology.2 These two terms are very tightly connected and Rorty seems to mean the same thing by them. Rorty uses the term "solidarity" to mean something like the identification with a broader community which was experienced by Jews with Italians, many of whom hid the Jews from the Nazis, and which was not experienced by Jews with many Belgians who did not hide Jews from the Nazis (Rorty, 1989, p. 189). He indicates that the traditional philosophical way (the way that Rorty thinks is obsolete and in need of replacement) of spelling out what solidarity means is "to say that there is something within each of us—our essential humanity—which resonates to the presence of this same thing in other human beings" (p. 189), but Rorty claims that there is no such thing as an "essential humanity." Although his discussion of what he means by "solidarity" is in the context of moral obligation, the meaning of this term and of the term "ethnocentrism" is central to understanding Rorty's view of


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epistemology. In discussing the meaning of the term "solidarity" Rorty claims that solidarity is something that "we have a moral obligation to feel . . . with all other human beings" (p. 190), and "our sense of solidarity is strongest when those with whom solidarity is expressed are thought of as 'one of us' where 'us' means something smaller and more local than the human race" (p. 191). In addition, Rorty recognizes that the notion of human solidarity is "a powerful piece of rhetoric" and wants to keep the power of the term but do away with the idea that solidarity is grounded in any kind of essence that human beings share. Rorty states, "Solidarity is not thought of as a recognition of a ... human essence in all human beings" (p. 192, emphasis added). Rather, solidarity "is thought of as the ability to see more and more traditional differences (of tribe, relation, race, customs, and the like) as unimportant when compared with similarities with respect to pain and humiliation— the ability to think of people wildly different from ourselves as included in the range of'us' " (p. 192).3 When building one's sense of solidarity outward from one's own tribe to others, Rorty states that "We should try to notice our similarities with them" (p. 196). The recognition of similarities with respect to pain and humiliation, between "us" and "others" is what creates for us an obligation to other human beings, and it is that which produces solidarity. In another place, Rorty makes the connection between "solidarity" and "ethnocentrism" which indicates that he uses the terms equivocally. He claims that solidarity is a way "in which reflective human beings try . . . to give sense to" their lives (Rorty, 199la, p. 21) by "telling the story of their contribution to a community," and in seeking solidarity a person "does not ask about the relation between the practices of the chosen community and something outside the community" (p. 21). The key connection here is between "solidarity" and "the practices of a chosen community" which is roughly equivalent to one's "ethnic" group. It is solidarity within a community that Rorty advocates, and community here is roughly equivalent to an ethnic group. (Although, the notion of "ethnic" group need not be understood along blood or nationalistic lines.) The connection between "solidarity" and "ethnocentrism" can

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be seen in Rorty's understanding of epistemology. He states, "Those who wish to reduce objectivity ['a special relation between beliefs and objects which will differentiate true beliefs from false beliefs'] to solidarity—call them 'pragmatists' 4 . . . view truth as ... what is good for us to believe . . . [and] do not need an account of a relation between beliefs and objects called 'correspondence'" (p. 22). Here he claims that "pragmatists" are those who understand truth to be "what is good for us [those having solidarity in a community] to believe" rather than as a special relation of correspondence between one's belief and reality. The pragmatist, according to Rorty, is one who holds to ethnocentrism, understood as a view of epistemology in which "there is nothing to be said about either truth or rationality apart from descriptions of the familiar procedures of justification which a given society—ours—uses in one or another area of inquiry" (p. 23). According to Rorty, the "pragmatist" who advocates "solidarity" is someone who holds to the view of epistemology as "ethnocentrism."5 So, it seems that Rorty uses the terms "solidarity" and "ethnocentrism" roughly equivalently. These terms describe the view that truth is that which is accepted by one's "group" or "tribe" or "political party" or "peers" or whatever. With respect to ethnocentrism and relativism, Rorty indicates that his goal is to escape "the self-referential difficulties into which 'the Relativist' keeps getting himself [by moving] everything over from epistemology and metaphysics to cultural politics, from claims to knowledge and appeals to self-evidence to suggestions about what we should try" (Rorty, 1998, p. 57). In the absence of knowledge and truth in the traditional (i.e. from Plato on) sense, one is left with two things: cultures (i.e. groups of people who have various ways of describing and redescribing the "world" around them), and politics (i.e. the interactions within and confrontations between these cultures) .This is what Rorty means by cultural politics.6 Rorty starts from his own elhnos of liberalism. He states, "We have to start from where we are . . . What takes the curse off this ethnocentrism is not that the largest such group is 'humanity' or 'all rational beings' . . . but, rather, that it is the ethnocentrism of a 'we' ('we liberal') which is dedicated to enlarging itself, to creating an


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ever larger and more variegated elhnos" (Rorty, 1989, p. 198) (Rorty's emphases). He proceeds from this cadre of his peers and directs his cultural politics outward. He states, "Our best chance for transcending our acculturation is to be brought up in a culture which prides itself on not being monolithic—on its tolerance for a plurality of subcultures and its willingness to listen to neighboring cultures" (Rorty, 1991a, p. 14) (Rorty's emphasis). Should one think that Rorty's ethnocentrism is better than that which is not dedicated to enlarging itself? Rorty might respond that his ethnocentrism is better only because the standards of his ethnic group justify the claim that it is better to enlarge one's ethnic group than not to do so. If he were to add that given any other competing claim made from within a different ethnic group (that competing being claim being justified by the standards held by that different group), there is no neutral way, with respect to the dispute, to settle the differences between the claims, then clearly Rorty would be holding to a relativistic position. However, throughout Rorty's works he denies that his understanding of epistemology as ethnocentrism amounts to relativism. Rorty's notion of ethnocentrism is what, he claims, keeps his view of epistemology from leading to the problems of ER. In several places, Rorty claims that his ethnocentrism cannot be accused of having the problems of ER, because generating the problems of ER requires that one accept the assumptions upon which the self-defeating nature of ER rests, and these are assumptions which Rorty denies. He states: To accuse postmodernism [i.e. Rortian ethnocentrism] of relativism is to try to put a metanarrative in the postmodernist's mouth. One will do this if one identifies "holding a philosophical position" with having a metanarrative available. If we insist on such a definition of "philosophy," then postmodernism is postphilosophical. But it would be better to change the definition (Rorty, 199la, p. 202). In another place, Rorty states, "We anti-Platonists cannot permit ourselves to be called 'relativists', since that description begs the

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central question. That central question is about the utility of the vocabulary which we inherited from Plato and Aristotle" (Rorty, 1999, p. xviii). In this same work he states that those who accept his form of ethnocentrism should "shrug off charges that we are 'relativists' or 'irrationalists' by saying that these charges presuppose precisely the distinctions we reject" (Rorty, 1999, p. xix). Rorty claims that to identify his views on epistemology as relativistic cannot succeed, because the metanarrative, the central questions, and the distinctions which the traditional anti-relativist uses to show the self-defeating nature of ER are the very things which Rorty abandons. He has simply left them aside and has changed the subject to talk about something else entirely. Rorty claims that since the definition of relativism outlined above only applies to theories of knowledge, and since Rorty claims to have done away with theories of knowledge, he cannot have a relativistic theory of knowledge (Rorty, 1991a, p. 23). 7 What then does Rorty offer in its place? His answer is "solidarity" and "ethnocentrism." Rorty's notion of "ethnocentrism" has its beginnings in his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. In that work as well as later works, Rorty emphasizes the common use of specific "vocabularies" as that which unites the members of an ethnic group, as that which gives them solidarity. Such a shared vocabulary might be used to talk about and act on the enlarging of the ethnic group from within which it is made, or articulating what constitutes the legitimate epistemic practices of the group. In that work Rorty explicitly states his admiration of those thinkers "whose aim is to edify—to help their readers .. . break free from outworn vocabularies" (Rorty, 1979, p. 12). These "vocabularies" consist of common terms which are used by members of an ethnic group in their conversations. By "conversation" (i.e. two or more people talking) Rorty means that with which the older, outdated, outmoded notion of confrontation between belief and reality "as the determinant of our belief (p. 163) is to be replaced. Knowledge then should be understood as "a matter of conversation and of social practice" (p. 171). Rorty's understanding of "conversation" just means ways of talking about something, ways of using a vocabulary to describe or redescribe the subject matter at hand.


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One might be tempted to think that conversations or ways of using vocabularies as that with which epistemology is to be replaced means that Rorty thinks that there is some kind of essence to language itself which can unite competing ethnic groups. However, Rorty does not think that language can function as that which is "supposed to supply the universal scheme" by means of which we find common ground with others (p. 317). Rorty recognizes that one might think that "to suggest that there is no such common ground seems to endanger rationality" (p. 317), and if "we say that there is no such thing as epistemology . . . we may be seen as saying that there is no such thing as rational agreement and disagreement" (p. 317). But Rorty claims that we might view epistemology as "hermeneutics" where "disagreements between . . . discourses are compromised or transcended in the course of conversation" (p. 317). The advocate of "hermeneutics" has a distinct understanding of rationality and inquiry. The advocate of "hermeneutics" maintains that being rational "is to be willing to refrain from . . . thinking that there is a special set of terms into which all the contributions [i.e. of various discourses] should be put . . . to be willing to pick up the jargon of the interlocutor rather than translating it into one's own" (p. 318). Inquiry is not something that gets reality right or wrong, rather "inquiry is routine conversation" (p. 318). The advocate of "hermeneutics" will view the participants in the conversation "as united in ... a societas—persons whose paths through life have fallen together, united by civility rather than by a common goal, much less by a common ground" (p. 318). In addition to advocating "hermeneutics" Rorty advocates "edification." Edification is a "project of finding new, better, more interesting, more fruitful ways of speaking" (p. 360). "Edification" is an "activity of thinking up ... new words . . . [It is an] attempt to reinterpret our familiar surroundings in the unfamiliar terms of our new inventions [i.e. new words]" (p. 360). An edifying philosopher is one who maintains that "even when we have justified true belief about everything we want to know, we may have no more than conformity with the norms of the day" (p. 367). Rorty emphasizes the project of edification as one that uses

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language within the conversation of a group instead of offering arguments. Rorty states, "The problem for an edifying philosopher is that qua philosopher he is in the business of offering arguments, whereas he would like simply to offer another set of terms, without saying that these terms are the new-found accurate representations of essences . . . they refuse to present themselves as having found out any objective truth" (p. 370). Rorty agrees with the edifying philosophers' task of "participating in a conversation rather than contributing to an inquiry" (p. 371), where "inquiry" is understood as getting things right or wrong in terms of having our beliefs correspond to reality. Epistemology is thus replaced with vocabularies, hermeneutics and edification. Truth is no longer understood as any kind of correspondence of sentences with reality. Rather, according to Rorty, "We have to see the term 'corresponds to how things are' as an automatic compliment paid to successful normal discourse rather than as a relation to be studied and aspired to throughout the rest of discourse" (p. 372). Wisdom becomes the skill which is "necessary to participate in a conversation" (p. 372). The philosopher's role "is to keep the conversation going rather than to find objective truth" (p. 377). Indeed, the aim of philosophy is to keep the "conversation going" which just "is to see human beings as generators of new descriptions rather than beings one hopes to be able to describe accurately" (p. 378). In the passages cited in this description of Rorty's understanding of ethnocentrism as that with which epistemology should be replaced, it is important to notice Rorty's emphasis on linguistic devices. Whereas epistemology, the project that Rorty rejects, understands things epistemic in terms of "beliefs," "propositions," "claims," or even "sentences" and "statements," Rorty's ethnocentrism focuses on merely linguistic entities which seem to lack anything resembling the epistemic entities (e.g. truth bearers) of epistemology. Consider the terms Rorty employs to describe his view of ethnocentrism: "vocabularies," "conversations," "social practices," "discourses," "jargons," "ways of speaking," "words," "norms of the day," "terms," and "descriptions." None of these items in any way resemble the entities of the traditional under-


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standing of epistemology. Rather, these linguistic devices are just the new tools we need in order to change projects. Rorty summarizes his view by claiming that "If we see knowing . . . as a right, by current standards, to believe, then we are well on our way to seeing the conversation as the ultimate context within which knowledge is to be understood" (p. 389) (Rorty's emphasis). The conversation consists of a "vocabulary" which consists of the linguistic entities listed above. Knowledge is to be understood in the context of a conversation where we have a right to believe, what our current standards (i.e. the practices exemplified in our community) allow us to believe. A person's "final vocabulary" are those linguistic entities consisting of a person's vocabulary that a person has a right to believe given the current standards of the participants of the conversation. Although a person might have the right to believe what the standards of her group allow her to believe, what in turn validates her culture's standards, her culture's final vocabulary? Rorty emphasizes that the advocate of ethnocentrism will maintain that "there is nothing which validates a person's or a culture's final vocabulary" (Rorty, 1989, p. 197). There are at least three ways to interpret this idea. First, it could mean that it is only through "vocabulary" that we have access to the world and that this is just the rock-bottom analysis of how we understand the world, of how we gain knowledge; we understand the world through the vocabulary we use. Second, it could mean that a view "apart from" any vocabulary is impossible. Third, it could mean that when considering the content of one's final vocabulary (i.e. that which the vocabulary is about), there is nothing "out there in the world" which matches up with or exists independently of particular vocabularies. I think that Rorty means all three of these things. If there are only final vocabularies, different conversations edifying different groups, then does this not amount to relativism? Rorty denies that his views are relativistic, and he distinguishes between three kinds of relativism, one of which is his notion of ethnocentrism:

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The first is the view that every belief is as good as every other. The second is the view that "true" is an equivocal term, having as many meanings as there are procedures of justification. The third is the view that there is nothing to be said about either truth or rationality apart from descriptions of the familiar procedures of justification which a given society—ours—uses in one or another area of inquiry. The pragmatists holds the ethnocentric third view. But he does not hold the self-refuting first view nor the eccentric second view (Rorty, 199la, p. 23) (Rorty's emphasis). Thus, in Rorty's view, he is an anti-relativist in two senses, but a "relativist" in a third sense. Rorty declares himself to be a "relativist" only in the sense in which relativism amounts to ethnocentrism.8 In terms of defending his view, or giving reasons to think his views are right, in terms of justifying his claim that ethnocentrism is the way to go when it comes to epistemology, Rorty claims "that these views seemed to cohere better with the institutions of a liberal democracy than the available alternatives do. When the value of such institutions is challenged . . . no direct answer can be given, because there is no neutral ground" (Rorty, 1989, p. 197). Since there is no neutral ground, "the pragmatist cannot justify these habits [of social life] without circularity" (Rorty, 1991a, p. 29). If justification for Rorty's understanding of knowledge is circular, or cannot be established apart from a particular ethnos, and there is no objective way to come to any conclusions about objects of study, how then ought we proceed? Rorty states, "We fuzzies [those who blur the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity] would like to substitute the idea of 'unforced agreement' for that of 'objectivity'" (Rorty, 1991a, p. 38).9 However, Rorty recognizes that To say that unforced agreement is enough raises the specter of relativism. For those who say that a pragmatic view of rationality is unwholesomely relativistic ask: "Unforced agreement among whom? Us? The Nazis? Any arbitrary culture or groups?" The answer, of course, is "us." This necessarily ethnocentric answer


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simply says that we must work by our own lights (Rorty, 199la, p. 38). Rorty claims that epistemology should be replaced with ethnocentrism, and that his ethnocentrism is not relativistic in any problematic sense, because he claims to have given up on the assumptions on which criticisms of relativistic epistemologies rest, namely that there is any nature to knowledge. He also claims that his own view of ethnocentrism is only true or valid or justified within the ethnic group from which the claim is made, and this is all we have. When it comes to competing views about knowledge other than Rorty's own ethnocentric view, Rorty states that there will be a conversation between these competing views, and this conversation is all that we have to hope for in terms of any resolution of the differences in our views.

Rorty's views on epistemology and ER

Do Rorty's views on epistemology, despite Rorty's claims to the contrary, amount to ER?10 Rorty's views will amount to ER just in case they fulfill both conjuncts of the definition. Let us examine his views in order to see if those conjuncts are fulfilled. First, does Rorty maintain the "standards" conjunct in the definition of ER given above? Rorty, in several places, appears to maintain that knowledge claims require an appeal to some kind of standards for their evaluation. Rorty rejects the notion that there is something beyond "ways of talking" toward which our ways of talking are more or less adequate and claims that various views about things are made within "ways of talking" or vocabularies. He states that one should "think that in the process of playing vocabularies and cultures off against each other, we produce new and better ways of talking and acting—not better by reference to a previously known standard, but just better in the sense that they come to seem clearly better than their predecessors" (Rorty, 1982, p. xxxvii). According to Rorty, the seeming better functions as a

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criterion or standard for being better, and "vocabularies and cultures" are that by means of which this standard is expressed. In addition, Rorty repeatedly emphasizes the notion of culture in describing his view about how vocabularies are established and evaluated. He states, "one consequence of anti-representationalism is the recognition that no description of how things are from a God's-eye point of view, no skyhook provided by some contemporary or yet-to-be-developed science, is going to free us from the contingency of having been acculturated as we were. Our acculturation is what makes certain options live, or momentous, or forced, while leaving others dead, or trivial, or optional" (Rorty, 1991a, p. 13). Again, the key word here is "acculturated" or "acculturation." It is the background standards of culture which establish the descriptions or vocabularies used within a culture. In order to show how the standards conjunct is satisfied, consider an example which Rorty would accept. For example, Rorty might accept the claim that "the sun rises in the east," but would claim that establishing this claim for an individual within a certain culture can be done only with reference to the standards held by the culture (or by means of the vocabulary used by that culture) and inculturated into the person considering the claim. Thus, Rorty's view of epistemology fulfills the "standards" conjunct of the definition of ER. Second, do Rorty's views of epistemology fulfill the "no neutrality" conjunct? I think that the answer is "yes." Rorty claims that when it comes to evaluating competing vocabularies, "The world does not provide us with any criterion of choice between alternative metaphors . . . we can only compare languages or metaphors with one another, not with something beyond language called 'fact' " (Rorty, 1989, p. 20). There are no facts beyond languages and vocabularies, or ways of description which can serve as something neutral by means of which competing languages or vocabularies can be adjudicated." This is then a holding to the "no neutrality" conjunct in the definition of ER.!2 In addition, Rorty states that


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Philosophy, as a discipline, makes itself ridiculous when it steps forward at such junctures and says that it will find neutral ground on which to adjudicate the issue [on resolving conflicting approaches to the study of epistemology itself]. It is not as if the philosophers had succeeded in finding some neutral ground on which to stand. It would be better for philosophers to admit that there is no one way to break such standoffs, no single place to which it is appropriate to step back. There are, instead, as many ways of breaking the standoff as there are topics of conversation (Rorty, 1989, p. 51) (Rorty's emphasis). Also, any attempt to determine a standard and to find neutral vocabulary by means of which to adjudicate between competing vocabularies is futile, according to Rorty. He states: "[Njothing can serve as a criticism of a final vocabulary save another vocabulary; there is no answer to a redescription save a re-re-redescription . . . there is nothing beyond vocabularies which serves as a criterion of choice between them" (Rorty, 1989, p. 80). 13 The key statement in this quotation is "nothing can serve as a criticism of a final vocabulary save another vocabulary." This statement indicates that Rorty's view of epistemology fits the "no neutrality" conjunct in the definition of ER. Since there are no neutral standards that can serve as a criticism of a final vocabulary, then given a competition between two final vocabularies, no neutral solution to the competition can be offered. This is just to say that there can be no neutral way to adjudicate between them. Thus, Rorty's views of epistemology fulfills the "no neutrality" conjunct in the definition of ER. As was indicated above, Rorty attempts to change the topic from a philosophical investigation into the nature of knowledge, or epistemology, into something else entirely. One of the things with which Rorty wants to replace epistemology (i.e. epistemology qua theory of knowledge) is what he calls "irony," and he indicates that epistemologists should be replaced by ironists. This notion is important in understanding that Rorty holds to both the standards and the no neutrality conjuncts in our definition of ER. According to Rorty, an "epistemologist" is someone concerned

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with an account of the nature of human knowledge and its foundations (or lack of them), but an "ironist" is someone who is concerned with description and redescription. Rorty states, Ironists who are inclined to philosophize see the choice between vocabularies as made neither within a neutral and universal metavocabulary nor by an attempt to light one's way past appearances to the real, but simply by playing the new off against the old. I call people of this sort "ironists" because their realization that anything can be made to look good or bad by being redescribed, and their renunciation of the attempt to formulate criteria of choice between final vocabularies, puts them in the position which Sartre called "meta-stable": never quite able to take themselves seriously because always aware that the terms in which they describe themselves are subject to change, always aware of the contingency and fragility of their final vocabularies, and thus of their selves (Rorty, 1989, p. 74). First, notice that the ironist seems to be maintaining that vocabularies are dependent on some sort of standards. By "anything can be made to look good or bad by being redescribed," I understand Rorty to mean that description is that by means of which our understanding (e.g. of the goodness or badness) of a thing is established. Thus, there can be a plurality of understandings of any particular thing (one person could understand the thing to be bad, and another could understand the thing to be good), and those understandings are established by the background standards which are descriptions generated from within a particular group. Thus, Rorty meets the standards conjunct in the definition of ER. Second, with respect to the no neutrality conjunct, notice Rorty's statement that "the choice between vocabularies" is not made "within a neutral and universal metavocabulary" (p. 73). Rorty is claiming that when one is faced with a decision as to which vocabulary one should use, one cannot appeal to any neutral standard or "metavocabulary" in order to make that decision.


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Thus, according to Rorty, there is no neutrality between competing vocabularies, and this is another indication that Rorty maintains the no neutrality conjunct of the definition of ER. Thus, Rorty's views of epistemology meet both conjuncts of the definition of ER. Since this is the case, presumably Rorty's views will fall prey to the criticisms of relativism raised by Siegel and defended in Chapters 1 and 2 of this work. However, Rorty agrees with the kinds of criticism raised by Siegel, namely that relativism as defined by Siegel is self-defeating and should be avoided. It is safe to say that Rorty has nothing good to say about relativism. He also has nothing good to say about any theory of knowledge, including relativism. Relativists understand knowledge to be a certain way, namely relative to something or someone. Rorty denies what even the relativist maintains, namely that knowledge is a certain way at all. Is Rorty an anti-relativist? Yes, in two senses. First, he is anti-ER in that he recognizes that ER is self-defeating.14 (Let us call this "traditional" anti-relativism.) He is also anti-ER in a second sense in that he denies that there is any "nature" at all to knowledge or truth. (Let us call this Rortian anti-relativism.) When opponents of Rorty accuse his views of being relativistic, they fail, according to Rorty, because when one ascribes ER to Rorty's views, one assumes that Rorty, like the relativist, thinks that knowledge has a certain essence or nature, namely a relative nature. However, this is just the assumption that Rorty is determined to deny. He denies that there is any nature to knowledge, including a relativistic one. Consider the following quotation which makes this crucial point: [I]t is not clear why "relativist" should be thought an appropriate term for the view [ethnocentrism] which the pragmatist does hold. For the pragmatist is not holding a positive theory which says that something is relative to something else. He is, instead, making the purely negative point that we should drop the traditional distinction between knowledge and opinion, construed as the distinction between truth as correspondence to reality and truth as a commendatory term for well-justified beliefs. The reason that the realist calls this negative claim

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"relativistic" is that he cannot believe that anybody would seriously deny that truth has an intrinsic nature. 15 So when the pragmatist says that there is nothing to be said about truth save that each of us will commend as true those beliefs which he or she finds good to believe, the realist is inclined to interpret this as one more positive theory about the nature of truth: a theory according to which truth is simply the contemporary opinion of a chosen individual or group. Such a theory would, of course, be self-refuting. But the pragmatist does not have a theory of truth, much less a relativistic one. As a partisan of solidarity, his account of the value of cooperative human inquiry has only an ethical base, not an epistemological or metaphysical one. Not having any epistemology, a fortiori he does not have a relativistic one (Rorty, 199la, pp. 23-4). The "traditional" distinction between knowledge and opinion is to be abandoned in favor of an understanding of truth as just what happens when one commends "as true those beliefs which [one] finds good to believe." The question is whether or not this is a "theory" of truth. If it were, according to Rorty, it would be self-refuting. In a discussion about the competing rationality of knowledge claims, Rorty again denies that his view is relativistic; it is anti-ER in the second sense indicated above: When we new fuzzies try to revive Dewey's repudiation of criteriology, we are said to be "relativistic." We must, people say, believe that every coherent view is as good as every other, since we have no "outside" touchstone for choice among such views . . . But we pragmatists do not hold to this relativist view. We do not infer from "there is no way to step outside communities to a neutral standpoint" that "there is no rational way to justify liberal communities over totalitarian communities."16 For that inference involves just the notion of "rationality" as a set of ahistorical principles which pragmatists abjure (Rorty, 1991a, p. 42). The key point in this quotation is Rorty's insistence that he does not make the inference from"no neutrality"to relativism (in this case


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instanced by the lack of availability of any criteria for justification of "good" over "bad" forms of communal life). The traditional antirelativist would state this claim in hopes of showing her interlocutor the absurdity of a result which assumes that "rationality" is group dependent, because it results in making equally epistemically legitimate any given conclusions. However, if one denies what the traditional anti-relativist maintains, namely that there are nonrelative standards for rationality, then, according to Rorty, this inference cannot be made. What inference does Rorty make from no neutrality? Rorty claims that we are left with ethnocentrism as a form of rational justification, of our own knowledge claims from the standards of one's own group or community. 17 I have argued that Rorty's views on epistemology fulfill both the standards and the no neutrality conjuncts in the definition of ER. In addition, Rorty himself acknowledges that ER is self-defeating, but claims that the problems of ER do not count against his view. They do not count against his view, because he claims to have given up on the assumption on which criticisms of ER rest, namely that there is any nature to knowledge. Rorty attempts to sidestep the devastating criticism of relativism raised by Plato and continued by Siegel and others, by simply changing the subject from epistemology qua search for the way knowledge is, to epistemology qua conversation together with description and redescription, together with the features of ethnic groups. I now turn to an evaluation of Rorty's attempt to sidestep the difficulties with ER.

Maclntyre and Putnam on Rorty's relativistic tensions Ethnocentrism is self-defeating While there is substantial agreement between both Maclntyre and Rorty and Putnam and Rorty, both Maclntyre and Putnam argue that Rorty's views on epistemology are self-defeating.18 The primary objection that Maclntyre has to Rorty's epistemological views centers around Rorty's account of epistemology in his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Maclntyre states:

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At perhaps its most fundamental level I can state the disagreement between Rorty and myself in the following way. His dismissal of "objective" or "rational" standards emerges from the writing of genealogical history . . . but at once the question arises of whether he has written a history that is in fact true; and to investigate that question, I should want to argue, is to discover that the practice of writing true history requires implicit or explicit references to standards of objectivity and rationality of just the kind that the initial genealogical history was designed to discredit (Maclntyre, 1982, p. 109). It is Rorty's use of historical examples and the knowledge of historical events which bothers Maclntyre. Maclntyre's argument against Rorty runs something like this: i. ii. iii. iv.

Rorty dismisses any objective standards for knowledge.19 Rorty writes a history of philosophy that presents knowledge claims about history. Rorty's history presupposes the standards he rejects, Therefore, Rorty's account of historical knowledge is self-defeating.20

Putnam has also argued that Rorty's views are self-defeating. Putnam argues that Rorty's insistence that truth is the agreement of one's cultural peers (Putnam, 1981b, p. 235), and that rational inquiry should be seen not as a search for truth, but rather as mere dialogue (Putnam, 1981a, p. 216), falls prey to the kind of selfdefeating arguments leveled by Plato against relativism. Putnam states: Richard Rorty might suggest that "justified relative to the standards of culture A" is one property and "justified relative to the standards of culture B" is a different property. But if we say that it is a. fact that acceptance of a given statement or theory is "justified relative to the standards of culture A," then we are treating "being the standard of a culture" and "according with the standard of a culture" as something objective, something itself


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not relative to the standards of this-or-that culture. Or we had better be: for otherwise, we fall at once into the self-refuting relativism of Protagoras (Putnam, 1982, p. 139). 21 Putnam is right that Rorty's view of truth is that of being in agreement with one's cultural peers. That Rorty maintains this view of truth is evident when he says things like, "even when we have justified true belief about everything we want to know, we may have no more than conformity with the norms of the day" (Rorty, 1979, p. 367). In the same work he states, "We have to see the term 'corresponds to how things are' as an automatic compliment paid to successful normal discourse" (Rorty, 1979, p. 372). Continuing on this same idea, in a later work Rorty states, "A liberal society is one which is content to call 'true' whatever the upshot of such encounters [between ways of speaking] turns out to be" (Rorty, 1989, p. 52) (Rorty's emphasis). In another work Rorty describes truth as "a commendatory term for well-justified beliefs" (Rorty, 1991, p. 23). At this point, one begins to wonder just what it means to say that a view is "true" from within one's ethnic group. Rorty means by "true," that the members of a particular group describe a certain situation in a certain way by using a particular vocabulary, or talk in a certain way. This however seems to be either uninteresting because its trivially true or interesting but clearly false. Rorty's view that truth is just the agreement with one's cultural peers is trivial, if by it Rorty just means that there are no truths if there are no languages. Rorty could mean that if there were no languages, i.e. no descriptions made by groups of people, there would be no truth. In some places this is what he seems to mean. He states, "Truth . . . cannot exist independently of the human mind . . . because sentences cannot so exist [independently of the human mind]" (Rorty, 1989, p. 5). In addition, Rorty argues that "where there are no sentences there is no truth" (p. 5). In another place, Rorty states "I do not think there are . . . any truths independent of language" (p. 159). If Rorty means that if there were no speakers of languages, there would be no truths, because truths are just semantic objects, then his view by itself is simply trivial,22 and it is certainly not relativistic.

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However, Rorty's view becomes very interesting, but clearly false because it is problematically relativistic, if one maintains, as Rorty maintains, that sentences are true just in case they are made, and proposition p expressed in one language can be true, and the negation of that proposition ~p, expressed in another language can also be true, just in case/? or ~p is consistent with the beliefs of one's cultural peers. This is a very interesting claim, but is clearly false as it falls prey to the same difficulties with ER. Since Rorty views knowledge or truth as that which is determined by the use of a group's final vocabulary, then one is faced with the question of what happens if the vocabularies of one group conflict with another group. Is there any way, other than force, to settle the dispute, especially since Rorty seems to maintain the no neutrality conjunct of ER? Given Rorty's own assumptions about the nature of reality and knowledge, when it comes to solving disputes between competing knowledge claims, why should listening be preferred to fighting? Why exactly should one prefer peaceful persuasion over power? In addition, if there are only descriptions, redescriptions, reredescriptions, and re-re-redescriptions, then how is one to adjudicate between competing descriptions or redescriptions? In answer to these questions, it is clear that Rorty maintains the following claim: P:

Various views about how to solve disputes between competing knowledge claims cannot be justified noncircularly.

The question becomes whether P is justified or not justified circularly. If P is justified circularly, then one wonders why it has any force with the person who do does not maintain it; barring any reason for being better (the reason for being better must be given non-circularly), one need not maintain it. If P is not justified circularly, then the reasons for maintaining P must be given and must be shown to be better than any other views to the contrary. However, given what Rorty does say, this option is not open to him. If one were to express the entire content of Rorty's views about knowledge with the symbol "Q," and express the negation of the


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entire content of Rorty's views about knowledge with the symbol "~Q/' then what would happen if one were to ask on what basis ought one accept Q, over ~Q, according to Rorty's own view? Presumably, given what Rorty does say, he would answer that one should accept his views because they allow one to live life better, or they are more pragmatically useful than other views. If this is the way that Rorty answers, and it seems that he does say something like this, then clearly Rorty is making pragmatic usefulness into an absolute standard by means of which one can judge between competing views about epistemology, but Rorty has denied that there are such standards. If Rorty simply claims that his views on epistemology are just the views that he and those in his ethnic group have and that is all there is to it, then one is not wrong or irrational or anything else if one rejects them; one is just different. However, if Rorty claims that his views are true or correct for himself and those in his ethnic group, and any view opposing or contradicting his view held by members of another ethnic group are true for that ethnic group, then Rorty is clearly holding to a form of epistemological relativism, a view which has been shown above to be self-defeating. Thus, "Rorty is forced to confront the problem of how we can choose between competing standpoints and social practices, and it is here that the limitations of Rorty's view come decisively to the fore" (House, 1994, p. 133). Ethnocentrism is incoherent

Rorty tries to escape the charge that his views are self-defeating by claiming that he does not have an epistemology, and that he does not think that knowledge is a certain way at all. Is this a satisfactory escape route from the self-defeating problems of ER? Susan Haack has called into question the coherence of Rorty's ethnocentric escape from the self-defeating nature of ER. Rorty's ethnocentrism or "tribalism" means that a person is "justified in believing that p" if and only if that proposition "satisfies the criteria of our epistemic community" (Haack, 1995, p. 137). This tribalism

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.. . enables Rorty to answer the criticism that he is relativist, but does not get him off the hook; on the contrary it reveals just how deep his difficulties are. Tribalism is entirely arbitrary and unmotivated unless one thinks that the criteria of one's own epistemic community are better than those of other communities; that is, it pulls against conventionalism, to which, however, Rorty is unambiguously committed (p. 137). Haack's key point is that if the tribalist does not maintain that his epistemic criteria are better than others, then those criteria are entirely arbitrary. 23 However, Rorty does not claim that his epistemic criteria are better than any others. For example, Rorty claims that there is "no way to answer . .. the question Am I using the right standards?" (Rorty, 1995b, p. 149). The idea of correct or incorrect criteria apart from the criteria of one's group is unintelligible, according to Rorty. All that Rorty may mean by his criteria being "better" than any other criteria is that his criteria produce views of the world which help us cope better than any other criteria. They may help us navigate through the world better than any other criteria; they provide us with a Jamesian successful leading.24 However, these criteria are "not better by reference to a previously known standard, but just better in the sense that they come to seem clearly better than their predecessors" (Rorty, 1982, p. xxxvii). In another place Rorty states, "For although the thoroughgoing ironist can use the notion of a 'better description,' he has no criterion for the application of this term and so cannot use the notion of'the right description' " (Rorty, 1989, p. 99). Rorty clearly maintains that there is no grounding of one's preference for epistemic criteria from within one's tribe or ethnos. When faced with the question of why one should accept the epistemic criteria of one tribe over another, Rorty has no answer. This is the kind of arbitrariness that Haack makes evident in her criticism of Rorty's position.25 Putnam also recognizes the difficulty with Rorty's attempt to slip out of the charges of relativism by appealing to ethnocentrism. The difficulty has to do with the fact that Rorty favors solidarity and conversation over other views about knowledge. Putnam shows that


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Rorty cannot consistently hold that some views are problematic and others are not. In this quotation, Putnam indicates the incoherence of Rorty's position: If [according to Rorty] all there is is talk and objects internal to talk, then the idea that some pictures are "metaphysical," or "misleading," and others are not is itself totally empty. If you really believe that language is about Nothing, that may give you a certain frisson, but I can't take you seriously. However, as soon as you shift into your "it isn't as bad as you think" mode, you begin to privilege one story within the vast array of stories that our culture has produced in just the way you criticize other philosophers for doing (Putnam, 1985, p. 349). In the first half of the quotation, Putnam tries to stop Rorty's move to ethnocentrism before he makes it. Putnam is presenting a dilemma for Rorty here. The first horn of the dilemma is that if there is nothing beyond languages and descriptions, then Rorty's claim that some pictures of knowledge are "misleading" is empty, since no one description is better or worse than another. The second horn of the dilemma is that as soon as Rorty claims that his view is not empty, and claims that his position is really right, or correct, or the way epistemology should be or is best understood, then Rorty is giving a "privileged" account, which is just what Rorty criticizes other philosophers for doing. On either horn of the dilemma, Rorty's view is incoherent. Putnam sees the implications of Rorty's denial of relativism and his move to conversations from an ethnocentric point of view when he states, "The statement of what sounds like relativism is for Rorty not the announcement of a metaphysical discovery, but a bit of rhetoric: a bit of rhetoric whose purpose is to get us to change our ways, to give up talk of truth and falsity rather than to express some kind of metaphysical truth. Relativism a la Rorty is rhetoric" (Putnam, 1992a^ p. 71), and rhetoric is not argument. While its persuasive power does have its place when combined with sound or strong arguments, mere rhetoric, rhetoric alone in the absence of any grounding in rational argument, cannot be taken seriously as

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(at least) a sufficient condition for being rational, nor has it been taken seriously since the time of Plato and the sophists. Thus, Rorty's views on epistemology cannot be taken seriously; they are simply incoherent.

Conclusion

Richard Rorty has offered persuasive criticisms of contemporary philosophy and asserts that the subject of epistemology ought to be changed from providing theories of knowledge to providing descriptions of cultural politics. In doing so, he affirms both the standards and no neutrality conjuncts in the definition of ER. Thus, Rorty's views seem to have the same problems as ER. When faced with these problems, Rorty again changes the subject from relativism to ethnocentrism. Rorty argues that he himself would have a self-defeating view of knowledge, if he actually had a theory of knowledge. However, there are good reasons to think that that view cannot be sustained. According to Maclntyre, it is self-defeating to deny all standards for the objectivity of knowledge and write a history of philosophy that consists of knowledge claims, claims which can only be established by presupposing the standards which Rorty rejects. According to Putnam, it degenerates to a form of rhetoric which cannot be taken seriously. So while Rorty is opposed to ER, and attempts to avoid ER through his ethnocentrism, that view ultimately cannot be sustained. Thus, in so far as Rorty's views amount to ER those views are self-defeating, and in so far as his views do not amount to ER by means of an affirmation of Rortian ethnocentrism, Rorty's views are highly problematic.

Notes

1. For a brief summary of this position of letting the old issues go by the wayside see Heal, 1990, p. 103.


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2. The term "ethnocentrism" may cause a reader to think of a racist or xenophobic perspective, but Rorty sees a difference between "ethnocentrism as a form of narrow-minded bigotry and ethnocentrism as a form of pragmatism in understanding liberal democratic ethics" (Rumana, 2000, pp. 78-9). Rorty means the latter. 3. In another place, Rorty adds, "The right way to construe the slogan ['We have obligations to human beings simply as such'] is as urging us to create a more expansive sense of solidarity than we presently have. The wrong way is to think of it as urging us to recognize such a solidarity, as something that exists antecedently to our recognition of it" (p. 196). 4. Rorty's use of "pragmatism" and his adoption of the term "pragmatist" to describe himself and his views may be a non-standard use of the terms. Rorty's "pragmatism" seems to be much different from the pragmatism of those who are traditionally understood to be pragmatists, e.g. C. S. Peirce or William James. See Haack, 1997, for a fascinating "conversation" between Peirce and Rorty which draws out the differences between these two "pragmatists." 5. Joseph Margolis claims that given Rorty's (and Putnam's) versions of pragmatism, "there is no prospect of reviving pragmatism without reviving the fortunes of both relativism and historicism" (Margolis, 2002, p. 157). I agree with this general claim, with respect to at least Rorty's "pragmatism," but contrary to Margolis, I do not think, given what I have argued in the first two chapters, that relativism can be coherently formulated. 6. Cultural politics seems to involve, according to Rorty, both intra and inter-cultural confrontation and interaction. 7. "Rorty believes relativism to be the most odiferous of red herrings" (Hall, 1994, p. 78). 8. The following are additional quotations that indicate Rorty's claim that ethnocentrism is that with which epistemology should be replaced, and that ethnocentrism does not amount to relativism: Among partisans of objectivity they give rise, once again, to fears of the dilemma formed by ethnocentrism on the one hand and relativism on the other. Either we attach a special privilege to our own community, or we pretend an impossible tolerance for every other group. I have been arguing that we pragmatists should grasp the ethnocentric horn of this dilemma (Rorty, 199la, p. 29).

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Relativism in Contemporary American Philosophy "Relativism" . . . is merely a red herring. The realist is, once again, projecting his own habits of thought upon the pragmatist when he charges him with relativism . . . [and] attributes to the pragmatist a perverse form of his own attempted detachment, [from any particular community] and sees him as an ironic, sneering aesthete who refuses to take the choice between communities seriously, a mere "relativist." But the pragmatist . . . can only be criticized for taking his own community too seriously. He can only be criticized for ethnocentrism, not for relativism (Rorty, 1991a, p. 30). I would add that there is no truth in relativism, but this much truth in ethnocentrism (Rorty, 199la, p. 31, footnote 13) (Rorty's emphasis).

9. Rorty states that his pragmatism has been called "the 'new fuzziness' because it is an attempt to blur . . . distinctions between the objective and the subjective and between fact and value" (Rorty, 1991a, p. 38). 10. As will be shown below, critics of Rorty's views about epistemology think that those views are relativistic. That Rorty has experience in dealing with such criticism is seen in his ability to give advice in the form of an article entitled "What Do You Do When They Call You a 'Relativist'?" (Rorty, 1997). 11. As an example of no neutrality, qua absence of any facts in the world which serve as criteria for choosing between competing claims, Rorty names, but does not cite, Thomas Kuhn and Mary Hesse as two philosophers who have explained "why there is no way to explain the fact that a Galilean vocabulary enables us to make better predictions than an Aristotelian vocabulary by the claim that the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics" (Rorty, 1989, p. 20). 12. Rorty denies that an affirmation of no neutrality entails relativism, "I do not think that denying that there are 'correct standards' should lead anybody to state that truth (as opposed to justification) is 'relative' to something" (Rorty, 2000, p. 11). 13. Rorty makes his view more explicit (here regarding items of moral knowledge, but I think that his views apply to any item of knowledge) when he states, "I do not think there are any plain moral facts out there in the world, nor any truths independent of language, nor any neutral ground on which to stand and argue that either torture or kindness are preferable to the other" (Rorty, 1989, p. 173). One might question whether a different vocabulary might serve as a locally neutral standard between competing claims made from within


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differing vocabularies. But this cannot be correct. Rorty emphasizes that there are only competing vocabularies, and the criticism of one final vocabulary by another is not locally neutral between the vocabularies; it is simply different from and critical of the other. 14. "The first [view of relativism] is the view that every belief is as good as every other . . . The [the pragmatist] does not hold the self-refuting first view" (Rorty, 1991a, p. 23). "Relativism certainly is self-refuting" (Rorty, 199la, p. 202). 15. Rorty uses the term "realist" here to refer to opponents of ER. 16. I take this example as an instance of the general claim that "there is no rational way to adjudicate between competing claims to knowledge." 17. The difficulty for Rorty here is that if he is making inferences, as he says he is, then he appears to be reasoning, and reasoning involves arguments with premises which are true or false. But, given Rorty's epistemology, Rorty cannot infer or reason at all in the ways that inference and reason are normally understood. Additional difficulties with Rorty's views on epistemology will be treated in greater detail below. 18. The agreement between Maclntyre and Rorty centers around the instructive nature of epistemological relativism; relativism has something philosophically interesting to teach us, while at the same time certain aspects of it must be rejected. More specifically, relativism teaches us that our knowledge claims may be conditioned by the particularities of our culturally dependent background beliefs. Maclntyre indicates that his search for some truth in relativism was sparked in part by Rorty's rejection of relativism in The Consequences of Pragmatism (Maclntyre, 1987a, p. 385, and p. 409, footnote 2). Putnam's agreement with Rorty centers around three points. First, Putnam agrees with Rorty that we do not have access to reality that is "unconceptualized" (Putnam, 1993a, p. 297). Their agreement here is captured in the notion of "internal" of Putnam's "internal realism" and Rorty's idea that what he calls knowledge is conditioned and determined by one's ethnos. Second, Putnam agrees with Rorty that metaphysical realism is unintelligible (p. 297). Neither philosopher can countenance the idea that there is a totality of all objects and properties of those objects that is entirely independent of human interest. Third, as a result of the first two points, Putnam agrees with Rorty that no sense can be made of the metaphysical realist

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understanding of truth involving the comparison of thought with reality as it is in itself (Putnam, 1995b, pp. 10-11). Concerning at least one similarity between Maclntyre, Putnam and Rorty one commentator states, "My overall interpretation, then, is that Maclntyre agrees with the widely held hermeneutic view that every attempt to state an absolute, objective truth cannot help but be conditioned by the particularities of the subjective culture and historical epoch and language and theoretical framework in which that truth is stated. As such, on this point, at least, Maclntyre is at one with people like .. . Putnam and Rorty" (Fuller, 1998, p. 27). 19. This is a point on which Maclntyre strongly disagrees with Rorty: "Unlike Rorty, I believe that there are strong and substantive conceptions of truth and rational justification—Aristotelian and Thomistic conceptions—that remain unscathed by his critique of foundationalism" (Maclntyre, 1998b, p. 265). Maclntyre means that his conceptions of truth and justification are stronger, more substantive, and better than Rorty's; their substance and strength coming from Aristotle and Thomas. 20. Maclntyre points out the same difficulty for Rorty's views in several other places: Indeed when Rorty invites us to assent to the version of the history of philosophy which he has presented . . . in his book . . . he is surely not merely trying to elicit our agreement in the light of presently socially accepted standards of work, within philosophy and history. For he is ... himself engaged in advancing a philosophical theory about the nature of such standards. And this theory he presumably takes to be true (Maclntyre, 1982, p. 109) (Maclntyre's emphasis). So we are perhaps entitled to a express a certain polite surprise when a contemporary philosopher [Rorty] who has shown both assiduity and ingenuity in trying to make credible the view that "is true" says no more than is said by "seems true to such and such persons, namely us" asserts that if there were any contemporary relativists, one could use against them some variant of what he calls the "arguments Socrates used against Protagoras." The surprise derives from our remembering that the premises from which Plato derived Socrates' refutation of Protagoras' version of relativism also entailed the necessary failure of any reinterprelative reduction of "is true" to "seems true to such and such persons."


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From these premises the one conclusion is not available without the other (Maclntyre, 1987a, pp. 386-7). The established order, having abandoned the notion of philosophical justification for its [philosophy's] exercise of authority, has at last found a philosopher [Rorty] to explain that by abandoning philosophy it has acquired philosophical justification once more (Maclntyre, 1987b, p. 86). 21.

Putnam makes similar points about Rorty in several other works. Consider the following quotations: To deny it [the idea that there is a notion of justification which is transcultural and . . . not simply a creation of the local epistemology and the standards of the time] is to land oneself in the commonest sort of self-refuting relativism. If one says (as Rorty recently has) [see Philosophy and the Mirror of Mature]that Tightness is simply a matter of what one's "cultural peers" would agree to, or worse, that it is defined by the "standards of one's culture" (Rorty compares these to an algorithm), then the question can immediately be put: Do the standards of Rorty's culture (which he identifies as "European culture") really require Rorty's "cultural peers" to assent to what he has written? Fortunately, the answer is negative (Putnam, 1984, p. 125). It seems more likely to me that, most of the time anyway, Rorty really thinks that metaphysical realism is wrong. We will be better off if we listen to him in the sense of having fewer false beliefs; but this, of course, is something he cannot admit he really thinks. I think, in short, that the attempt to say that from a God's-Eye View there is no God's-Eye View is still there, under all that wrapping (Putnam, 1987a, p. 20). It looks—to me at any rate—as if Rorty says "no more metastories" and tries to convince us by telling us a higher-level metastory of his own, a cultural relativist or cultural imperialist metastory. But if you go ... so far as to say "no more metastories," then you had better not tell me a metastory—not even a metametastory! (Putnam, 1994, p. 344). Rorty's insistence that talk of "truth" is merely emotive (a "compliment" we pay to certain beliefs) rests on his curious notion that we are connected to the world causally but not semantically

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Relativism in Contemporary American Philosophy . . . Rorty is in the grip of the picture that Eliminative Materialism is true of the Noumenal World, even if he is debarred by the very logic of his own position from stating that belief (Putnam, 1995, p. 74) (emphasis added).

22. Although, this view might not be un-problematic. For example, Rorty could not make sense of the truth of propositions that are about events prior to the existence of languages, propositions about the origins of the cosmos. For example, the proposition that there were stars before there were plants, would not be true until there is some language in which the proposition is made. On the face of it, it seems that the proposition that there were stars before there were plants is true even if there were no people at all. 23. For a "qualified defense" of Rorty's attempt to make epistemic criteria non-arbitrary, see Thompson, 2001. Thompson, in a consideration of Rorty's justification for a particular moral position (i.e. slavary is wrong), seeks to show that Rorty can still maintain his ethnocentrism and maintain this putatively absolute claim. Thompson states, "I can only defend the truth of my proposition by showing that it is well justified, that I have a warrant for asserting it" (p. 42), and as long as we are fallibilistic in our claims, there is no problem. The difficulty for Thompson's defense of Rorty's position is that if one is both fallibilistic and ethnocentric in Rorty's sense, then anything can be made to be good or bad, true or false, justified and unjustified if the linguistic conditions which determine the standards of justification or truth or rational acceptabilty are met within the ethnos under consideration. 24. See also, Hall, 1994, p. 81. 25. Charles Taylor criticizes Rorty in a similar vein when he indicates that Rorty's refusal to continue the traditional questions in epistemology, "closes down all consideration of how thinking agents acquire reliable, justified knowledge of the world" (Taylor, 2003, p. 171). This would include Rorty's own account of ethnocentrism.

Chapter 6

Toward an ER-Free Epistemology

Introduction

Thus far I have shown first, that Maclntyre, Putnam and Rorty argue that ER is problematic. Second, I have indicated the extent to which these philosophers maintain both the "standards" and the "no neutrality" conjuncts of ER. Third, I have shown that they maintain that the difficulties raised against their versions of ER do not obtain. Maclntyre offers an account of how traditions can defeat one another. Putnam claims that there is an idealized form of truth or rationality toward which all conceptual schemes aim. Rorty presents an ethnocentric view of epistemology in which all of the assumptions required to make the criticisms against ER are absent. Fourth, I have offered substantial reasons, from each of these thinkers (as well as other philosophers), to think that none of these three ways around the difficulties of ER are completely satisfactory. In this final chapter I would like to consider how these philosophers might avoid the difficulties that affect their views, difficulties which arise because of an affirmation of the definition of ER. There are at least two options open to these three philosophers to make their epistemologies consistent. First, they might jettison the portions of their epistemologies that meet the definition of ER. Second, they might develop a way to shore up their views in order to overcome the difficulties raised in the chapters above. Given that this second option has not yet been offered by these thinkers, in this final chapter I will consider the first option of rejecting the parts of their epistemologies that fit the definition of ER.

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The standards conjunct as a necessary condition for epistemology

I have indicated above that Maclntyre, Putnam and Rorty affirm the standards conjunct of the definition of ER. However, affirming this conjunct alone does not lead to ER. The standards conjunct as articulated by Siegel simply states that knowledge claims can be established only with reference to a standard of evaluation. Siegel states, For any knowledge-claim p, p can be evaluated (assessed, established, etc.) only according to (with reference to) one or another set of background principles and standards of evaluation Si, . . . sn (Siegel, 1987, p. 6). This seems to be a necessary condition for any epistemology, including relativism, insofar as relativism can be understood as a theory of knowledge. If one were to develop an epistemology without something like the standards conjunct, one would need to provide a case in which a knowledge claim p was evaluated, assessed, established without any standards of evaluation. One possible candidate for the establishment of a knowledge claim without reference to standards of evaluation might be a subject S's direct intuition ofp without any standard of evaluation. S might just see that p.An example of this might be something like the rational intuition of the forms that Plato illustrates in the Republic. Knowledge claims about the forms, especially the form of the good, might be established only with reference to one's direct experience of the forms; one sees or intuits them directly with the "mind's eye." In this case p might be something like "The form of the good is beautiful." One could establish this claim only if one were to see that the form of the good is beautiful. This claim, being about something that is putatively beyond any standards of evaluation (the good, according to Plato, being the standard of evaluation), could only be established by a direct experience alone. Certain theistic propositions might also be such that they cannot be established or


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evaluated by standards. Rather, they must be seen or experienced directly to be established, or they may be such that they can be established only through divine revelation, e.g., where/? is "God is one," "God is triune," or "God is love." There are several ways around such counter-examples to the standards conjunct being a necessary condition for epistemology. First, if certain forms of empiricism are correct, there just may be no such thing as rational intuition. If it could be shown that establishing knowledge claims in this manner were impossible, then these kinds of counter-examples would also be impossible. Second, there may not exist the kinds of things that can be seen in this way, even if such rational intuition were, in principle, possible. For example, if physicalism is true, Platonic forms could not exist. Third, even if there is this kind of rational intuition and assuming that the kinds of things that can be seen in this way do exist, it may be that there are standards of evaluation lurking in the background. For example, if one were to establish or evaluate some proposition through rational intuition, presumably it would be the case that one can establish or evaluate the proposition at hand only because of some minimal standard of evaluation. Such a standard would be a standard in a minimal sense, in that it allows one to differentiate between a proposition established as an item of knowledge and a proposition that is merely believed. For example, if one were to say that one established the proposition p, "God is one," through a direct experience or rational intuition of the deity without reference to any standard of evaluation, one would be leaving out the fact that some minimal standard of evaluation is required in order to differentiate that claim, as an item of knowledge, from the mere belief that "God is one." In this case "rational intuition" is itself functioning as a standard, albeit one that only applies to these kinds of experiences. As a standard, it allows one to distinguish between rationally intuited experiences which establish knowledge claims and rationally intuited experiences which give rise to beliefs. If one claims that such standards are not needed for proposition p, where/? is "God is one," one would be leaving out the fact that there was some way in which one established this claim through the experience of rational

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intuition of God, and did not establish q: "God is many." So, if one were to take rational intuition as a counter-example to the claim that the standards conjunct is a necessary condition for any epistemology, one must take into account that there will always in principle be some way by means of which one establishes one's claim as an item of knowledge. This is consistent with the standards conjunct in the definition of ER. While these examples do not exhaust the possible range of counter-examples to the standards conjunct being a necessary condition for any epistemology, I have indicated that whatever counter-example one provides, there will always be some way that one is able to distinguish a knowledge claim from a belief, and at least in this minimal sense, all knowledge claims must be established and evaluated by a standard of some kind. One might challenge the claim that the standards conjunct is a necessary condition for any epistemology by arguing that whichever standards of evaluation are used to establish a knowledge claim, those standards themselves must either be established through standards of evaluation or be established without appeal to any other standards. The first option would lead to an infinite regress of standards, or a circle of mutually established standards, and this is hardly a desirable position for one wanting to establish a knowledge claim. The second option denies exactly what the standards conjunct affirms, namely that knowledge claims can be established only with reference to standards of evaluation. Unfortunately for the critic of the standards conjunct, this criticism is a non-starter. The standards conjunct is not making claims about the exact standards of evaluation one uses in establishing knowledge claims. Rather, it simply states that for any knowledge claim that is established, there will be some standards by means of which that claim is established. Even if the standards conjunct is the claim in question which needs to be established or evaluated, the standards conjunct can consistently apply to itself without leading to an infinite regress or selfcontradiction. The standards conjunct just says that every knowledge claim, including the standards conjunct itself, will be established and evaluated by standards. However, it leaves open


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what those standards will be and how they will be established. Thus, an attack on how the standards themselves are established does not yet count against the standards conjunct itself. The standards conjunct, I conclude, is simply a necessary condition for the evaluation of knowledge claims. In addition, an acceptance of the standards conjunct alone does not lead to epistemological relativism. If one were to claim that standards are relative to tradition, but that there are ways to neutrally evaluate between competing standards, one would not be an epistemological relativist. There is nothing self-defeating or inconsistent, so far. If one makes standards relative to culture, tradition, etc., it seems to be a short step to a denial of the possibility of neutrality, and it is here that the inconsistencies arise. If one simply adds that the standards that one has, which are internal to that to which one's standards are relative (e.g. culture or tradition), prohibit one from having any access to any neutral arbiter by means of which to settle disputes arising from the use of competing standards, then one faces the problems of epistemological relativism. One must not close the door to the possibility of there being something that can serve as a neutral arbiter for competing culturally bound standards of epistemic evaluation. As soon as one denies that there can be this kind of neutrality, one has closed the door to any adjudication between competing standards, and epistemological relativism, together with its difficulties, follows. With respect to the standards conjunct in the definition of ER, I have argued first, that it is a necessary condition for any epistemology, including a relativistic one. Second, I have argued that the conjunct is not open to criticism based on how or what standards are involved; it simply states that standards are always involved in the establishment and evaluation of epistemic claims. Third, I have indicated that maintaining the standards conjunct alone does not lead to epistemological relativism without the additional claim that there is no, or cannot be any, neutrality between competing standards of evaluation.

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Rejecting the no neutrality conjunct

If the standards conjunct is a necessary condition for any epistemology, then necessarily, if Maclntyre, Putnam or Rorty are to have an epistemology, then they must accept the standards conjunct. That they do accept this conjunct has been shown above. In addition, I have argued above that to one extent or another each of these philosophers accepts the no neutrality conjunct of the definition. 1 It is the acceptance of the no neutrality conjunct that is at the heart of ER. In a conflict between two standards (SjandS evaluation, where Si establishes p and 82 establishes ~p, the proponent of the no neutrality conjunct will argue that there is no neutral way—neutral with respect to the dispute between S] and 82—to choose between them. It is just this claim that leads to an incoherent position. This can be seen by considering the no neutrality conjunct as articulated by Siegel and here labeled proposition q: q:

[Gjiven a different set (or sets) of background principles and standards si', . . . sn', there is no neutral (that is, neutral with respect to the two (or more) alternative sets of principles and standards) way of choosing between the two (or more) alternative sets in evaluating p with respect to truth or rational justification, p's truth and rational justifiability are relative to the standards used in evaluating/? (Siegel, 1987, p. 6).

Suppose someone were to maintain q; presumably, this claim would be established by means of some epistemic standard Si. Suppose someone else maintains ~q, by means of epistemic standard S2. According to the proponent of q, there is no way to settle the epistemic dispute between the advocates of Si and 82- Thus, there is no way to establish Si, and thus, there is no way to establish q. Thus, it is self-defeating to maintain that q is itself established. In other words, when q is asserted, given the content of q, the assertion itself


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cannot be rationally established or justified. Since it is self-defeating to maintain q, any epistemology in which q is affirmed will be an epistemology that cannot rationally establish or justify itself, and it will fall prey to the arguments against ER discussed in the first two chapters. Thus, to the extent that Maclntyre, Putnam, Rorty or any epistemologist accepts the no neutrality conjunct, their epistemologies will be highly problematic.

Accepting local neutrality

Barring any successful attempt to overcome the self-defeating nature of the no neutrality conjunct, one possible way out of the difficulties with ER that Maclntyre, Putnam and Rorty might choose is to accept the standards conjunct, while rejecting the no neutrality conjunct. This response to the problem of ER alleviates the substantial difficulties that these epistemologists face when both conjuncts are affirmed. However one characterizes the standards of epistemic evaluation and neutrality, as long as one does not make the self-defeating claim that there can be no neutrality between competing standards of epistemic evaluation, one's epistemology will be free of the problems of ER. In the first section of Chapter 2, I argued that a distinction can be made between two senses of neutrality, "global" and "local" neutrality, where "global" neutrality involves the existence of criteria of epistemic evaluation that can settle all epistemic disputes once and for all, and where "local" neutrality is understood in terms of epistemic criteria of evaluation which can settle some particular disputes. Given this distinction, I argued that, on the one hand, it is reasonable to maintain that we may not have global neutrality when we are faced with conflicts between standards of evaluation in an epistemic dispute. Since propositions are established by often disparate and competing standards, we may not have a globally neutral way to determine which standards we should accept, once and for all, for all epistemic disputes. On the other hand, I argued that it is unreasonable to maintain that we cannot have local

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neutrality for the resolution of a particular epistemic dispute in which we are faced with competing standards of epistemic evaluation. Given an epistemic dispute, it is possible for there to be a neutral meta-standard which can adjudicate between two competing standards of epistemic evaluation. Such a standard must be at least non-arbitrary according to both disputants, and it must not beg the question against either standard of evaluation. In addition, this locally neutral standard must be such that if its conditions are met, one of the standards in dispute will be fairly judged to fare worse than, or be inferior to the other standard. While it may be the case that something like Maclntyre's "traditions" or Putnam's "conceptual schemes" or Rorty's "final vocabulary" are necessary conditions for knowledge (i.e. one can only have knowledge by means of one or another set of standards of epistemic evaluation), the mere having of these standards does not automatically preclude the possibility of objective locally neutral standards which can adjudicate cases of conflict between epistemic standards. I have argued above that the relativist's attempted preclusion is self-defeating. The acceptance of the standards conjunct does not imply relativism. Moreover, I will argue, contrary to the relativist, that acceptance of the standards conjunct implies the possibility of local neutrality. This can be demonstrated by a general logical point regarding the nature or meaning of disputes between competing standards of epistemic evaluation. The fact of a dispute implies that local neutrality is a real possibility. Given a dispute between standards of epistemic evaluation, necessarily it is possible for there to be a locally neutral standard between them. This can be shown by beginning with the standards conjunct of the definition of ER which states the following: For any knowledge-claim p, p can be evaluated (assessed, established, etc.) only according to (with reference to) one or another set of background principles and standards of evaluation Sj, . . . sn (Siegel, 1987, p. 6). It is possible to ask the person trying to establish some proposition


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why they accept the standards they do, rather than some other standards. Either they were chosen arbitrarily, or they were chosen for some reason. If the standards one uses were chosen arbitrarily, then the person who holds to those standards can make no claim that those standards are better than any other standards. If one selects one's standards of evaluation for no reason, then one's defense of why one uses those standards cannot be a rational defense, since arbitrary reasons for choosing certain standards over other standards are not good reasons for choosing the standards one uses. Let us say quite generally that to select non-arbitrarily one set of standards of evaluation instead of another as the standards by means of which one establishes a proposition p, is necessarily to maintain that those standards better establish p (or establish p with fewer problems) than any other standards. The non-questionbegging reasons that one has for accepting one's standards used to establish p will have something to them which other standards of evaluation lack. For example, if the standard of evaluation is explanatory power, then to maintain that explanatory power establishes/? is to maintain that there are good reasons to choose this standard over and above others, and that with respect to this standard, p is justified. For any given epistemic dispute, if one of the sides in the debate thinks that they have non-question-begging, good reasons for the standards that they use, then that side is committed to the possibility of local neutrality. It is one's acceptance of one's standards as nonarbitrary and non-question-begging that commits one to the possibility of local neutrality. The possibility of local neutrality is found in each side's claim that their own reasons for accepting the standards that they use, are non-question-begging, good reasons. Thus, given a dispute concerning standards of evaluation, if each side maintains that the reasons that they have for the standards that establish the claim in question are non-question-begging, nonarbitrary, good reasons, then each side is claiming to have good reasons for their standards which should be found persuasive by their rational opponents. This implies that each side will necessarily be committed to the possibility of some locally neutral way of

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determining which standards of evaluation should be used to solve the dispute. This logical argument for the possibility of local neutrality centers around the nature or meaning of what it is to have standards of epistemic evaluation which one takes to be backed by non-arbitrary good reasons. From the fact that a person has standards of epistemic evaluation, if one holds those standards for what one takes to be good reasons, it logically follows that one regards local neutrality as a real possibility. Whatever the standards of epistemic evaluation one has, if one has those standards, it follows that one may have those standards for reasons which one takes to be good, nonarbitrary, non-question-begging reasons. If one takes their standards of epistemic evaluation to be had for good, non-arbitrary, non-question-begging reasons, then one is committed to the possibility of local neutrality. Thus, the possibility of local neutrality is entailed by having standards that one takes to be non-arbitrary. This means that if a relativist accepts the standards conjunct of the definition of relativism, the relativist must also accept that local neutrality is a real possibility. If local neutrality is a real possibility, then the second conjunct in the definition of relativism cannot be held consistently by the relativist. Thus, relativism cannot get off the ground, once one acknowledges that one has standards of epistemic evaluation, which one takes oneself to hold for non-arbitrary, nonquestion-begging, good reasons. The argument begins by recognizing that for any standard of epistemic evaluation there will be reasons that a person has for having those standards. 2 From the fact that a person has standards of epistemic evaluation, there are only two possible options for why a person has those standards. They either maintain those standards for arbitrary reasons, or they maintain them for non-arbitrary reasons. However, if the reasons are arbitrary, then they are irrational and thus not good reasons. The idea of arbitrary reasons that are good reasons (i.e. epistemically forceful reasons) is contradictory; it is absurd as a silent noise. In fact, it would be self-defeating to maintain the claim that all one's reasons for maintaining epistemic


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standards are arbitrary, since the reasons for maintaining this proposition itself, will be purely arbitrary, and thus there will be no more reason for accepting this proposition than its negation. Thus, reasons cannot be held arbitrarily and still be counted as good reasons, by the person who holds them. Thus, the reasons for maintaining standards of epistemic evaluation must be thought to be non-arbitrary. If they are thought to be non-arbitrary, then one is committed to the possibility of local neutrality. 3 We began with the relativistic claim that given a conflict between differing standards of evaluation there is no neutral way to choose which standard of evaluation one should use. It has been shown, however, that necessarily, given a conflict between differing standards of evaluation, if one takes their standards of evaluation to be supported by non-arbitrary, non-question-begging, good reasons, then one is committed to the possibility of establishing a locally neutral way to adjudicate between standards of evaluation. One's commitment to the possibility of establishing a neutral standard centers around the fact that there is a real dispute between competing standards, standards which the disputants take to be grounded in non-question-begging reasons for holding to those standards. Thus, contrary to the relativist, it is possible for there to be neutral ways to settle conflicts between competing standards of epistemic evaluation. This section began with the recognition that apart from a way around the clearly self-defeating nature of ER, the three philosophers considered above might avoid the difficulties with ER by accepting the standards conjunct and rejecting the no neutrality conjunct. I have argued that given the standards conjunct, if the two sides in a dispute take their standards to be held for nonquestion-begging good reasons, then each side is committed to the possibility of local neutrality. 4 Thus, an acceptance of the standards conjunct, together with cases of conflicts between standards of evaluation each of which are held for non-arbitrary reasons, implies the negation of the no neutrality conjunct, at least with respect to local neutrality. Thus, by accepting the standards conjunct, these philosophers logically must reject the no neutrality conjunct. Thus, they must reject relativism. In the remainder of this section I will apply the argument just

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raised (that the acceptance of the standards conjunct together with one's maintaining that the reasons that one has for one's standards are non-arbitrary and good reasons, implies a commitment to the possibility of local neutrality) to various cases in which differing standards of epistemic evaluation are in conflict. In each case, I will show that each side has a specific standard of evaluation, that each side seems to understand their standards to be held for nonquestion-begging, non-arbitrary, good reasons, and that each side is thus committed to the possibility of local neutrality between the competing standards in question. First, consider the following example from the history of science. Ptolemaic astronomers attempted to establish proposition p, p:

The earth is the center of planetary motion,

by means of the following standards of evaluation Si, Sf.Conceptual economy, the ability to explain commonsense experiences, and understandability (Kuhn, 1957, pp. 37—8).5 Copernican astronomers attempted to establish proposition q, q:

The sun is the center of planetary motion,

by means of a standard of evaluation S2> S2:

Fruitfulness, i.e. "the effectiveness [of theories] as guides for research and as frameworks for the organization of knowledge" (p. 40).

According to the relativist, given these different standards of evaluation, there is no neutral way to determine which standard to use, and thus there is no neutral way to establish p or q over and above the other. However, contrary to the relativist, the mere fact that Si and 82 are different standards of evaluation means neither that there can be no neutrality between them nor that the propositions established by them cannot be established as superior


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to the other. Rather, it means that if each side understands their standards to be established for non-question-begging good reasons, then each side is committed to the possibility of local neutrality. Kuhn indicates that each side in the dispute between Ptolemaic and Copernican views of astronomy6 held their standards for what they took to be non-question-begging good reasons. One of the main reasons that each side maintained the standards they did included the ability of their standards of evaluation to "solve the problems" of planetary motion. They took this reason to be non-questionbegging and non-arbitrary. Ptolemaic astronomers thought that these problems were solvable by the addition of multiple epicycles. Copernicus thought that the Ptolemaic view was incompatible with available observational data, and thus one of the reasons Copernicans rejected the Ptolemaic model was that it did not seem to solve the problems as well as the Copernican model. According to Kuhn, Copernicans also held their standards for reasons of "quantitative precision" (Kuhn, 1962, p. 153) as a kind of problem-solving ability. Kuhn states, "The quantitative superiority of Kepler's Rudolphine tables to all those computed from the Ptolemaic theory was a major factor in the conversion of astronomers to Copernicanism" (p. 154). Another example of what the Copernicans took to be non-question-begging, good reasons for holding the standards which they held is shown in Kuhn's indication that Kepler's ability to use his mathematical models combined with the data of Tycho Brahe's observation allowed him to develop a simple mathematical technique which "yielded predictions [of planetary motion] far more accurate than any that had ever been made before" (Kuhn, 1957, p. 2 1 2 ) . The Copernicans' commitments to non-arbitrary, good reasons for the standards that they had, imply that they were committed to the possibility of locally neutral standards that could settle their dispute with the Ptolemaics. Assuming that the Ptolemaics also took the reasons for their standards to be non-arbitrary good reasons, then they too were committed to the possibility of locally neutral standards that could settle the dispute. If each side in the dispute took themselves to have non-question-begging reasons for the standards that they had, it

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follows that each side was committed to the possibility of local neutrality between their standards. This commitment to the possibility of local neutrality would make it possible for the dispute to be resolved in a locally neutral way, with each side presenting the putatively non-question-begging reasons for their standards of evaluation in order for them to be evaluated in putatively nonarbitrary and non-question-begging ways.7 The purpose of this example from the Ptolemaic/Copernican controversy is not to show how or that in fact this scientific dispute was resolved. Some cases may not be resolved or even resolvable given current scientific development. But that a case is not resolved, does not imply relativism. If each side understands their standards of evaluation to be held for non-question reasons, then the dispute is, in principle, resolvable in a locally neutral way. The purpose of this example (and the ones that follow) is to show that epistemological relativism does not follow from cases in which two disputants attempt to establish different propositions with different standards of evaluation which were held for what they took to be non-arbitrary, non-question-begging good reasons. These cases are presented to illustrate that when the disputants in an epistemic conflict take their standards of epistemic evaluation to be held for non-question-begging reasons, then each side is committed, contrary to the relativist, to the possibility of locally neutral standards serving as the means by which the conflict is resolved. Being committed to these standards of epistemic evaluation involves a commitment to local standards, because such standards need not solve all epistemic disputes on all topics for all time, but they might at least solve particular disputes at specific times. In particular, they can solve disputes in which the disputants accept the local standards as standards, especially when their positions commit themselves to the local standard in question. In fact, such locally neutral standards have played a significant role in settling particular disputes in the history of science. Thus, contrary to the relativist, local neutrality is a real possibility and has been demonstrated as a means by which to settle particular epistemic disputes.8 Let me turn now to examples that are raised by Maclntyre and


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Rorty in order to show how, contrary to the relativist, each side in a dispute is committed to the possibility of local neutrality. I indicated above that, according to Maclntyre "relativism can be a rational response" to "social and institutional circumstances" which are comprised of "frontier or boundary situations" (Maclntyre, 1988, p. 388) like those faced between speakers of "the Zuni Shiwi language of, say 1540 and the Spanish conquistador es" (p. 390). Maclntyre claims that an individual within either of those communities is faced with conflicts in cosmology, law, justification, and "alternative and incompatible sets of beliefs and ways of life" (p. 390) in which "each of these sets of beliefs and ways of life will have internal to it its own specific modes of rational justification in key areas and its own correspondingly specific warrants for claims to truth" (p. 390). Using the definition of ER, Maclntyre's explanation of this situation would run something like the following. The Spanish conquisladores are attempting to establish the proposition p: p:

Spanish original nobody become

control over territory in the new world is "an act of acquisition of what had so far belonged to and therefore of what had remained available to only now someone's private property" (p. 390),

by means of standard of evaluation Sj, Sf.Consistency with the concepts of ownership derived from Roman, feudal and canon law.9 At the same time, the Zuni tribes people are attempting to establish the proposition q, q:

Spanish conquest of native territory is the illegitimate seizure of land that "so far belonged to nobody because it is what cannot ever be made into private property" (i.e., common land) (p. 391),

by means of the standard of evaluation 82,

170 S2:

Relativism in Contemporary American Philosophy Consistency with tribal customs of private ownership of common land.

I indicated above that, according to Maclntyre, there is no neutral way to determine which standard of epistemic evaluation should be used in such cases.10 Contrary to this relativistic claim, if both sides take their reasons for their standards to be non-arbitrary, and non-question-begging, then each side is committed to the possibility of local neutrality. For example, the Spaniards may have had as their reasons for their standards the notion that exploitation of underdeveloped land was fruitful for colonial expansion, beneficial for Spain, and helpful for the local population. In addition, the Spaniards' reasons may have centered on the central claims of fuedal and common law. In fact, the Spanish introduction of domesticated animals and plants allowed the Zuni to expand their local economies greatly (Ferguson, 1996). On the other hand the Zuni may have claimed that foreign incursion was not fruitful for the preservation of Zuni traditions, and in fact, the Zuni population dwindled greatly after the Spanish incursion into their territories, due to the introduction of diseases to which the Zuni were not immune." In this case, each side had a standard of epistemic evaluation which was used to establish competing propositions. Each side took themselves to have non-arbitrary reasons for accepting their standards. This implies that each side was committed to the possibility of local neutrality. Thus, contrary to Maclntyre, such conflicts do not imply relativism, rather they imply that each side is committed to the possibility of a non-relative resolution of the dispute. As with the example from the Ptolemaic/Copernican controversy, it is not important for the purposes of this chapter to show that or how the dispute between the Spanish and the Zuni was resolved. What is important is to recognize that each side in the dispute understood the reasons for their standards to be held for nonarbitrary reasons. Thus, each side was committed to the possibility of local neutrality. This dispute was then, in principle, resolvable in a locally neutral way with each side examining the putatively non-

Toward an ER-Free Epistemolopy

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arbitrary reasons which they took to establish their standards of evaluation. That this was actually done is not what is important with respect to arguing against relativism. What is important for arguing against relativism is to show that, in cases like the one Maclntyre raises, relativism is not the ultimate result. Rather, each side's commitment to good reasons for their standards opens the door for the possibility, contrary to the relativist, of local neutrality, and so to a non-relative resolution of the dispute. Turning to Rorty, let me restate a point Rorty made above regarding the absence of neutrality between competing standards of epistemic evaluation. Rorty states that his reasons for maintaining the views set forth in his work rest on the fact that his "views seemed to cohere better with the institutions of a liberal democracy than the available alternatives do. When the value of such institutions is challenged . . . no direct answer can be given, because there is no neutral ground" (Rorty, 1989, p. 197). Let me use a particular example that Rorty mentions, and was mentioned above to show how Rorty's position can be set forth using the definition of ER. Rorty states, "I do not think there are any plain moral facts out there in the world . . . nor any neutral ground on which to stand and argue that either torture or kindness are preferable to the other" (Rorty, 1989, p. 173). This absence of neutral ground to establish a particular proposition would, according to Rorty, look like the following. An advocate of torture would attempt to establish proposition p, p:

Torture is morally preferable to kindness,

by means of a standard Sj, Sf.Coherence or consistency with the accepted practices of the community within which p is made. 12 An advocate of kindness would establish proposition q, q:

Kindness is morally preferable to torture,

by means of standard 82,

172 S2:

Relativism in Contemporary American Philosophy Coherence or consistency with the accepted practices of the community within which q is made.

Thus, p is thought to be established within the culture that holds to Sjandq is thought to be established within the culture that holds to S2. According to Rorty, there can be no neutral ground for determining which standard is better than the other. However, as in the examples above, if the parties in this dispute understand the reasons for their standards to be non-arbitrary, good reasons, then each side is committed to the possibility of local neutrality. If they are arbitrary, then, as indicated above, the person holding to those reasons cannot claim that their standards are better than any other standards. Since Rorty's example is not very well developed in terms of a description of the parties involved, the commitment of both sides to the possibility of local neutrality only follows if each side takes the reasons for their standards to be non-arbitrary. It is important to recognize that the logical point made at the beginning of this section can be applied directly to Rorty's example. Each side of the dispute might be asked why they accept the standards they have. Either those standards are held arbitrarily, or for some reason. If the standards of the community that prefers torture to kindness, for example, were chosen arbitrarily, then that community can make no claim that their standards are better than any other standards, and any defense of those standards will be irrational. If those standards are held for reasons that are nonarbitrary, and are thought, by those who hold them, to be nonarbitrary and good reasons, then they are committed to the possibility of local neutrality. Thus, Rorty's example leads to a dilemma. Either local neutrality is a real possibility with the dispute resolvable non-relativistically, or the dispute is one in which at least one side has purely arbitrary and irrational reasons for their standards, in which case that side's defense of their standards will not be a rational defense. Again, the purpose of considering this example from Rorty is not to show that such a case is resolved, or will be resolved. Rather, the point of considering this example is to show that epistemic relativism


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qua Rortian ethnocentrism need not be the inevitable result of epistemic disputes like the one Rorty raises. The purpose of this example is to show that in principle, such a dispute could be solved in a locally neutral way, just in case both disputants take their reasons to be non-arbitrary reasons. If they do, then, contrary to the relativist, the parties are open to the possibility of the result being resolved in a locally neutral way. The supporter of epistemic relativism might argue that the examples from the history of science and from Maclntyre and Rorty, where epistemic neutrality is possible are too easy. The relativist might claim that they do not adequately represent competing standards of epistemic evaluation which differ greatly. In the cases above, the standards of epistemic evaluation are too closely related, for each set of competing standards clearly contain shared commitments which provide neutral ground between them. The relativist might go on to say that in cases where the standards of epistemic evaluation are totally unrelated, there can be no locally neutral way to determine which standard one should choose to establish a proposition. The relativist might point to debates between "young universe creationists" and "old universe naturalists" concerning the age of the universe as a case in which very disparate standards of epistemic evaluation are present. For example a "creationist" might seek to establish the proposition p, p:

The universe is approximately six thousand years old,

by means of a standard of evaluation S^ Sf.Coherence with special revelation (e.g. the Torah). In contrast, the "naturalist" might attempt to establish q, q:

The universe is approximately 13 billion years old

by means of a standard of evaluation 82,

174 S2:

Relativism in Contemporary American Philosophy Coherence with empirical data and theory from the natural sciences.

In this case, according to the relativist who denies local neutrality, the standards of epistemic evaluation in conflict, coherence with special revelation on the one hand and coherence with empirical data from the natural sciences on the other, are different enough that there is no possibility of local neutrality to determine which standard one should choose. In such a case, each side may take the reasons for their standards to be non-question-begging and non-arbitrary. The parties in such a dispute may have non-question-begging reasons for maintaining the standards that they do. For example, one of the reasons that the "naturalist" might have for his standards is that religious authority as a standard of epistemic evaluation is not as reliable as empirical observation.13 The "naturalist" might argue that the claims made within a sacred text are, even according to the text itself, to be taken as nothing more than mythological stories with purely didactic intentions. In addition, the "naturalist" might argue that his standards of epistemic evaluation are able to explain more phenomena than a religious text, including propositions regarding the age of the cosmos, ages which contradict what the "creationist" accepts from her religious traditions. Similarly, the "creationist" might offer as a reason for accepting her standard the conclusion of an argument based on empirical observation from say, contemporary cosmology, that it is reasonable to believe that there may be a being who could have designed the cosmos in a relatively short period of time, and done so in such a way that the universe merely appears old. This need not imply that the creationist is committed to 82. It may be that one of the reasons that the creationist has for her standards is one that is taken from what she claims to be part of the natural world in which some manifestation of the divine is present. The theist might have a more "religious" reason for maintaining the standard she does. Perhaps she believes that the authors of the scriptures received a direct revelation from God in which the age of the universe was revealed, and perhaps she has a good argument for how this is rationally possible.


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The parties in this dispute face the dilemma raised above. Either the reasons for their standards are arbitrary or they are not. If they are arbitrary, then there can be no rational defense of either standard. That is, if the theist, for example, maintains her standards for purely arbitrary reasons, then she cannot maintain that her standards are better than the naturalist's standards, and any defense she might offer for her standards, will not be a rational defense. On the other hand, if the theist believes that her standards are held for non-arbitrary, good reasons then she will maintain that the reasons for her standards should be found persuasive to her naturalist interlocutor. The same applies to the naturalist. Either his standards will be held for arbitrary or non-arbitrary reasons. If they are arbitrary, then no rational defense can be given for his standards. If he believes them to be non-arbitrary good reasons, then he is committed to the possibility of local neutrality. If each side takes the reasons for their standards to be non-question-begging reasons, then each side is committed to the possibility of a locally neutral ground by means of which the dispute can be settled. Thus, contrary to the relativist, even in cases where the standards in question are disparate, as this example is intended to show (i.e. religious texts, versus scientific data), both sides can be committed to the possibility of locally neutral standards. Whether or not such dispute is presently solved, or even solvable, given current scientific evidence or understanding of sacred texts, is not what is at issue here. Such a study, as to whether propositions established by religious belief are more warranted than those established by contemporary science, would be a worthy enterprise. However, it is not the enterprise that is needed to thwart relativism. In fact, such an enterprise could not in principle get off the ground if epistemic relativism is not precluded from the beginning. What is at issue is the fact that disputes in which the standards of epistemic evaluation are disparate (e.g. sacred texts versus scientific data) do not necessitate epistemic relativism. Epistemic relativism is precluded, just in case each side takes the reasons for their standards to be good reasons. This understanding of epistemic standards opens the possibility of local neutrality for the resolution of such disputes. It is quite possible that each of these examples, both real and

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hypothetical, which attempt to show that if each side takes their reasons to be good reasons, then each side is committed to the possibility of local neutrality, is faulty. One might think these examples are faulty because the exact locally neutral standard has not been specified. This, however, misses the point. One need not specify the locally neutral standard to preclude relativism. All that is done in these examples is to show that contrary to the relativist, both sides are committed to local neutrality as a real possibility, just in case each side takes the reasons for their standards to be good reasons. The point of this argument is not to specify the locally neutral standards, but simply to block the relativistic move from the standards conjunct to the no-neutrality conjunct. This argument demonstrates that given the standards conjunct, together with cases of conflicts between standards of evaluation in which both sides take the reasons for their standards to be good reasons, it follows that each side is committed to local neutrality between their competing standards of evaluation. The success of this argument implies that any epistemology that accepts the no neutrality conjunct (as understood as rejecting the possibility of local neutrality) will be both logically inconsistent and self-defeating. Thus, I conclude that if one is to construct a logically coherent epistemology, one must accept the standards conjunct and reject the no neutrality conjunct in the definition of ER.

Conclusion

I have argued that central to epistemological relativism is the acceptance of the no neutrality conjunct in the definition of relativism. I have indicated that a distinction must be drawn between "global" and "local" neutrality, and that it is the rejection of the latter that makes relativism problematic. I have argued that the rejection of local neutrality is both self-defeating and clearly false, since there are clear examples of neutral standards which can adjudicate between competing standards of epistemic evaluation taken to be held for non-arbitrary good reasons.


177

More specifically, to the extent that Maclntyre, Putnam and Rorty deny local neutrality, their epistemologies will be clearly problematic. I have argued that the way around the difficulties of ER that would be best for Maclntyre, Putnam and Rorty would be to deny the no neutrality conjunct of the definition of ER. However, none of these philosophers could take this route without significant revisions in their epistemologies. An acceptance of the standards conjunct and the no neutrality conjunct are (to a greater or lesser extent) part and parcel of the epistemologies of these philosophers.14 Acceptance of the no neutrality conjunct, as a rejection of local neutrality, must be jettisoned before their epistemologies would be free of difficulties. So, while these philosophers have claimed that ER is problematic, and that their own epistemologies yield some insight into ER without the problems of ER, I have argued (as have each of these thinkers against the others), that these "insights" embroil these epistemologies in the very problems that are raised by ER itself. I have argued that while the standards conjunct of ER may be a necessary condition for any epistemology, it is the affirmation of the no neutrality conjunct which is both at the heart of ER and generates the major difficulties with ER. Thus, any epistemology which affirms the no neutrality conjunct of ER is highly problematic. In addition, I have argued that Maclntyre, Putnam and Rorty, to the extent which they maintain the no neutrality conjunct, have highly problematic epistemologies. I have indicated the ways that these thinkers try to get around the difficulties with ER while holding to the no neutrality conjunct. I have argued that each attempt fails, and the failure of these attempts has to do with an acceptance of the no neutrality conjunct. I have indicated in this chapter that there are ways that local neutrality can be had that are exemplified in clear cases in the history of scientific inquiry. In addition, local neutrality is a logical outcome of an acceptance of the standards conjunct, together with cases of conflict of standards of epistemic evaluation. Any epistemology which contains an understanding of local neutrality that offers clear locally neutral standards that are able to settle disputes between competing standards of epistemic evaluation

178


will have the resources to avoid the difficulties faced by epistemologists, like Maclntyre, Putnam and Rorty, who claim that relativism offers an insight into how we should understand knowledge. I conclude then, that, contrary to Maclntyre, Putnam and Rorty, far from offering any insight into epistemology, ER is highly problematic and ought to be avoided, and ER can be avoided by rejecting the no neutrality conjunct in the definition of ER. With a proper understanding of the ways in which local neutrality can be had, rational human beings seeking to establish knowledge claims by means of competing standards of epistemic evaluation should not conclude that the truth or justification of those claims are non-neutrally relative to the epistemic standards used to establish them. Rather, contrary to ER, there are ways to understand how local neutrality can be had which allow there to be non-relative evaluations of competing standards of epistemic evaluation. Consequently, the truth of our knowledge claims can be determined, and their rational justification can be had, in a nonrelativistic way.

Notes

1. In the chapter on Putnam, I indicated that on one interpretation, it seems that Putnam does maintain the no neutrality conjunct, but on another perhaps more charitable reading, Putnam does not maintain this. 2. If the relativist were to claim that people have epistemic standards, but they have them for no reason at all, the relativist's position would be rather unconvincing and would amount to a mere statement of belief. The relativist would have to be consistent and state that the claim that people have epistemic standards for no reason at all is something that the relativist holds for no reason at all, but this does not make the relativist's case very persuasive. 3. One might worry about the threat of skepticism here. If two sides in a dispute are committed to the possibility of local neutrality, might this not lead to a situation in which there is no further justification of the


4.

5.

6.

7.

179

locally neutral standards that are taken to be that by means of which the dispute is resolvable, and might this be a kind of skepticism about the grounds for these locally neutral standards? It might. But the focus on local neutrality is a defeater of relativism, and not skepticism. If each side in the dispute believes that their standards are correct (e.g. true, or rationally justified), and claims to have good reasons for those standards, then each sided is committed to the possibility of local neutrality. Whether skepticism arises from a situation in which local neutrality between competing epistemic standards is possible, is irrelevant to the fact that relativism is defeated just in case local neutrality is a real possibility. It is this real possibility that has been demonstrated above and in the arguments that follow. The possibility of local neutrality is irrelevant to defeating skepticism, but that is not the concern of this work. The possibility of local neutrality is relevant to defeating relativism, and that is what is being done in this section. The commitment to the possibility of local neutrality allows for the possibility of locally neutral resolution to an epistemic dispute, and it need not imply that such a resolution is practicable. The study of how such conflicts are actually resolved in practice is a worthwhile study. It is not necessary to provide such an account in order to stand against relativism, and such an account is beyond the scope of this work. Kuhn points out that through observation and reason unaided by technological and mathematical advances, the ancients were convinced that the earth as a moving planet was an absurd notion (p. 43). It is beyond the scope of this work to analyze both the extent and merits of Kuhn's views of epistemological relativism. See Siegel, 1987, Chapter 3, for an extensive discussion of this issue. I am simply using this historical example (which Kuhn uses to develop his arguments regarding how scientific progress is related to paradigm shifts) to show a particular case in which local neutrality might be had. It must be noted that Kuhn downplays the importance of such locally neutral standards in explaining scientists' acceptance of one paradigm over another. I am simply using these locally neutral standards raised by Kuhn to show that, contrary to the epistemological relativist, local neutrality can in fact be had. By "resolved" I do not mean that the two disputants would stop talking about the dispute, but that it is possible for them to come to the truth of the matter about which side is right, or at least if not to the truth of the matter, that they can come to see that one side has

180

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

Relativism in Contemporary American Philosophy greater warrant or justification for their beliefs in the matter than the other. Given a dispute between standards of epistemic evaluation, one may question whether those standards are in fact incommensurable. If they are incommensurable, then it would seem that there is no possibility for local neutrality to be had between them. However, the claim that competing standards of epistemic evaluation are incommensurable is itself established by a standard of epistemic evaluation, and it may face a competing claim established by a different standard of epistemic evaluation in which it is claimed that competing standards of epistemic evaluation are commensurable. This is similar to the claim made by ER, and I believe can be shown to be selfdefeating in the way that ER is self-defeating. Even if it is possible that competing standards of epistemic evaluation are incommensurable, can there be local neutrality between them? All that would be needed for local neutrality is something as minimal as what Kuhn calls the "puzzle solving ability" (Kuhn, 1962, p. 205) of the allegedly incommensurable paradigms. However, if "puzzle solving ability" as a locally neutral standard is inconsistent with incommensurability, then so much the worse for incommensurability, since incommensurability appears to be self-defeating. Thus, contrary to the relativist, local neutrality can be had. As I have stated it, Sj is an oversimplification. Sj involves, according to Maclntyre, an understanding of property which derives its justification from the tradition in which it is made by means of "exemplars to be found in the socially recognized canonical texts" (Maclntyre, 1987a, p. 392) of the culture. These texts function as the standards by means of which propositions are rationally established or justified, according to Maclntyre. See Chapter 3 (Rationality within traditions) above, where I present Maclntyre's account of standards. Maclntyre states, "[TJhere is no set of independent standards of rational justification by appeal to which the issues between contending traditions can be decided" (Maclntyre, 1988, p. 351). Maclntyre does not provide an historical account of how the Zuni and Spanish conflict was settled. He simply raises the example as an illustration of two competing standards of epistemic evaluation. The Zuni conflict over land use continues to the present day. See Ferguson, 1996. It may seem strange that sets of practices can function as standards,


181

but this is what Rorty understands standards to be. See Chapter 5 (Rorty's views on epistemology) above. 13. Such an example might come from C. S. Peirce's "The Fixation of Belief (Peirce, 1982). 14. In Putnam's case, only on some interpretations can he be understood as rejecting local neutrality.

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Index

Althusser, Louis 117n. 9 anthropologism 21—22 Aristotelian biology 64—5 Baghramian, Maria 7, 15n. 2, n. 4 Ballard, Bruce 75n. 24 Barrera, Moris 77-8 Bayley, James 4 Beam, Gordon 117n. 2 Bellatoni, Lisa 73n. 2 Bennigson, Thomas 15n. 2 Borst, Clive 12 boundary conditions 55ff Burnyeat, M. F. 13-14, 31 Case, Jennifer 114, 119n. 18 Chisholm, Roderick 43n. 14 Churchland, Paul 117 cognitive pluralism 35ff conceptual relativity 96ff, 111-12 conceptual schemes 34 consciousness 35 Davidson, Donald, 4In. 4 defeating traditions 57—62 Deleuze, Gilles 117n. 9 Devine, Philip, 26-32 Dewey, James 140 Doran, Katheryn 95, 103, 119n. 15, n. 23 essentialism 64, 74n. 22 ethnocentrism 127 ff, 147, 150n. 8

facts 60, 103 Feldman, Susan 68 Ferguson, T. J. 170 Forster, Paul 123n. 39 Foucault, Michel 117n. 9 foundationalism 70, 76n. 28 Fuller, Michael 152n. 18 Fuller, Michael 74n. 17-18 Gifford, N. L. 4 'God's eye view' 112—13 Goldman, Alvin 118n. 12 Goodman, Nelson 81 Gutting, Gary 74n. 17 Haack, Susan 117, 119n. 4, 145-6n. 9, n. 10, n. 12 Haldane, John 78 Hall, David 149n. 7 Harre, Rom 4 Heal, Jane 148n. 1 Hermeneutics 131—2 Hesse, Mary 150n. 11 House, Vaden 145 Husserl, Edmund 21—6 idealization of rationality 81, 110, 113 internal realism 8Iff, 98, 113 internalism 77 irony 137ff Isaac, Jeffrey 68, 70 James, William 149n. 4

101, 120n. 24-6,

192


Jay, Wallace72n. 6 Johanson, Paul 117n. 4 Jordan, James 10 Kant, Immanuel 64 Kuhn, Thomas 150n. 11, 166-7, 179n. 5, n. 6, n. 8 Lacan, Jacques 117n. 9 Lacey, A. R. 2 language 35 Levin, Michael, 42n. 10 Locke, John 16n. 5 logical laws 18, 27 Luper, Steven 16n. 7 Lutz, Christoper 68-9, 73n. 12 Maitra, Keya 117n. 3 Margolis, Joseph 44n. 19, 12In. 29, 122n. 36, 149n. 5 Matson, Wallace 72n. 6, 74n. 18, n. 19 Matthews, Eric 119n. 21 McCullugh, C. Behan 79 Meiland, Jack21-6 mereological sums 99ff, 107—8, 119n. 23 Miller, Dickinson lOn. 26 neutrality 3, 52, 18ff, 1021F, 115, 136, 155, 160ff O'Grady, Paul

15.n

Preston, John 85 Protagoras5ff, 152n. 20 Raatikainen, Panu Rational intuition rationality 48ff reasons 162ff Rumana, Richard

120n. 25 157—8

149n. 2

skepticism 10, 178n. 3 Smith, R. Scott 70, 75n. 26 Snider, Eric 68 solidarity 126ff solipsism 11-15, 88ff Solomon, Miriam 89ff standards 3, 51, 100, 135, 155-60 Stich, Stephen 35^10 subjectivism 32—3 Swoyer, Chris 32—5 Taylor, Richard 154n. 25 Theaetetus 5ff Thompson, Simon 154n. 23 Throop, William 95, 103, 119n. 15, n. 23 tradition independence 59—60 traditions 47ff Truth 91, 96, 104ff, 143-4 Vinci, Thomas 13 vocabularies 131—2, 137 Von Dohlen, Richard, 72n. 6

1

Peirce, C. S. 149n. 4 Plato 5, 156 Pojman, Louis 2 Porter, Jean 72n. 7 postmodernism 86fF, 129 pragmatic realism 94 pragmatism 128, 149n. 4

Wachbroit, Robert 57 Wallace, Jay 75n. 26 Weinstein, Jack 48, 75n. 27 Willard, Dallas 41 n. 2, n. 4, 117n. 6 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 78ff Zellner, Harold

10

Relativism in Contemporary American Philosophy: MacIntyre, Putnam, and Rorty

Relativism in Contemporary American Philosophy: MacIntyre, Putnam, and Rorty

Hilary Putnam Contemporary Philosophy

Alasdair MacIntyre (Contemporary Philosophy in Focus)

Alasdair MacIntyre (Contemporary Philosophy in Focus)

Richard Rorty (Contemporary Philosophy in Focus)

Hilary Putnam (Contemporary Philosophy in Focus)

Hilary Putnam (Contemporary Philosophy in Focus)

Virtue Ethics: Dewey and MacIntyre (Continuum Studies In American Philosophy)

Virtue Ethics: Dewey And Macintyre (Continuum Studies in American Philosophy)

Hilary Putnam (Philosophy Now)

Tradition in the Ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre: Relativism, Thomism, and Philosophy

Relativism and Reality: A Contemporary Introduction

Relativism and Reality: A Contemporary Introduction

Relativism and Reality: A Contemporary Introduction

Relativism and the Foundations of Philosophy

Plato and Protagoras: Truth and Relativism in Ancient Greek Philosophy

Contemporary Philosophy in Focus

Contemporary Philosophy in Focus

Contemporary Philosophy In Focus

Contemporary Philosophy In Focus

Contemporary Philosophy In Focus

Contemporary Philosophy in Focus

Contemporary Debates in Social Philosophy (Contemporary Debates in Philosophy)

Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Biology (Contemporary Debates in Philosophy)

Contemporary Debates in Political Philosophy (Contemporary Debates in Philosophy)

Creativity in American philosophy

Rorty and His Critics

Rorty and His Critics

Putnam and beyond

Putnam and Beyond

Relativism in Contemporary American Philosophy: MacIntyre, Putnam, and Rorty