Social Epistemology and Relativism

223 Pages·2020·1.827 MB·English

by  Natalie Alana Ashton, Martin Kusch, Robin McKenna, Katharina Anna Sodoma

i
Social Epistemology and
Relativism
This is the first book to explore the connections and interactions between
social epistemology and epistemic relativism. The essays in the volume are
organized around three distinct philosophical approaches to this topic: 1)
foundational questions concerning deep disagreement, the variability of
epistemic norms, and the relationship between relativism and reliabilism;
2) the role of relativistic themes in feminist social epistemology; and 3)
the relationship between the sociology of knowledge, philosophy of
science, and social epistemology.
Recent trends in social epistemology seek to rectify earlier work that
conceptualized cognitive achievements primarily on the level of isolated
individuals. Relativism insists that epistemic judgements or beliefs are
justified or unjustified only relative to systems of standards – there is
not neutral way of adjudicating between them. By bringing together
these two strands of epistemology, this volume offers unique perspectives
on a number of central epistemological questions.
Social Epistemology and Relativism will be of interest to researchers
working in epistemology, feminist philosophy, and the sociology of
knowledge.
Natalie Alana Ashton is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of
Stirling. Before this she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University
of Vienna, and before that completed her PhD at the University of
Edinburgh. Her research concerns the political and social aspects of
epistemology – specifically the effects of oppression and power on
epistemic justification. She has published papers on feminist standpoint
theory, hinge epistemology, and epistemic relativism, and on the
connections between all of these. Her latest work investigates what
these topics can tell us about online epistemic environments.
Martin Kusch has been Professor of Philosophy of Science and
Epistemology at the University of Vienna since 2009. He has published
research monographs with OUP, Routledge, MIT Press, and Acumen.
His main current area of research is epistemic relativism, past and
present. He is currently writing two monographs: a defence of epistemic
relativism, and a study of the first 20th-century defender of relativism,
Georg Simmel.
Robin McKenna is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Liverpool.
Before coming to Liverpool he worked in Austria (at the University of
Vienna) and Switzerland (at the University of Geneva). He completed
his PhD at the University of Edinburgh. Most of his work is in
epistemology, but he is also interested in the philosophy of language,
philosophy of science, and ethics. Within epistemology, he works on
various topics in applied epistemology, feminist epistemology, and
social epistemology more broadly. Current topics of interest include
the epistemology of persuasion, the epistemology of climate change
denial (and of “dysfunctional epistemologies” more broadly), epistemic
injustice, and social constructivism.
Katharina Anna Sodoma is a doctoral candidate at the University of
Vienna. She wrote her dissertation on moral relativism and the possibility
of moral progress as part of the ERC project “The Emergence of
Relativism” and has published on this topic.

Routledge Studies in Epistemology
Edited by Kevin McCain
University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA
Scott Stapleford
St. Thomas University, Canada
Pragmatic Encroachment in Epistemology
Edited by Brian Kim and Matthew McGrath
New Issues in Epistemological Disjunctivism
Edited by Casey Doyle, Joseph Milburn, and Duncan Pritchard
Knowing and Checking
An Epistemological Investigation
Guido Melchior
Well-Founded Belief
New Essays on the Epistemic Basing Relation
Edited by J. Adam Carter and Patrick Bondy
Higher-Order Evidence and Moral Epistemology
Edited by Michael Klenk
Social Epistemology and Relativism
Edited by Natalie Alana Ashton, Martin Kusch,
Robin McKenna and Katharina Anna Sodoma
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Studies-in-Epistemology/book-series/RSIE
v
Social Epistemology and
Relativism
Edited by Natalie Alana Ashton,
Martin Kusch, Robin McKenna
and Katharina Anna Sodoma
Firstpublished2020
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vii
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
1. Introduction 1
NATALIE ALANA ASHTON, MARTIN KUSCH, ROBIN MCKENNA,
AND KATHARINA ANNA SODOMA
PART I
Foundational Issues in Social Epistemology 9
2. Hinge Disagreement 11
ANNALISA COLIVA AND MICHELE PALMIRA
3. Norms of Inquiry in the Theory of Justified Belief 30
SANFORD C. GOLDBERG
4. Relativism: The Most Ecumenical View? 47
ALEXANDRA PLAKIAS
5. Naturalism, Psychologism, Relativism 66
HILARY KORNBLITH
PART II
Feminist Epistemology and Social Epistemology 85
6. Relativism in Feminist Epistemologies 87
NATALIE ALANA ASHTON
7. Feminist Epistemology and Pragmatic Encroachment 103
ROBIN MCKENNA
viii Contents viii
8. Charity, Peace, and the Social Epistemology of Science
Controversies 122
SHARYN CLOUGH
9. Epistemic Responsibility and Relativism 143
KRISTINA ROLIN
PART III
Social Epistemology and the Sociology of Scientific
Knowledge 159
10. Sociologism and Relativism 161
DAVID BLOOR
11. Sociologistic Accounts of Normativity 174
PAUL BOGHOSSIAN
12. Relativism in the Sociology of Scientific
Knowledge Revisited 184
MARTIN KUSCH
List of Contributors 204
Index 207
ix
Acknowledgements
This volume is a product of the ERC Advanced Grant Project “The
Emergence of Relativism: Historical, Philosophical and Sociological
Issues,” which was hosted by the Philosophy Department of the Univer-
sity of Vienna between 2014 and 2019. The main objectives of the
project were threefold. First, to retrace the intellectual history of the
emergence of important forms of relativism (and counterpart forms of
anti-relativism) in 19th and early 20th-century German-speaking philos-
ophy and science, giving proper attention to the various influences of
French- and English-speaking authors. Second, to explain key junctures
of this history in sociological terms. Third, to critically evaluate the
central arguments for and against specific relativistic ideas, both as
they were formulated in the period under investigation and as they
have been further developed in more recent discussions. The project
was interdisciplinary in that it brought together expertise from intellec-
tual history, the history of science, the sociology of knowledge, and phi-
losophy. All three strands of the project were the topic of international
workshops and conferences. This volume belongs with the third strand
of the project, the critical evaluation of arguments for and against episte-
mic relativism.
We are grateful to the participants of a 2018 workshop in Vienna in
which several of the papers collected here were first tried out. The work-
shop was one of the key events during an ERC-funded “Advanced Grant
Project” entitled “The Emergence of Relativism” (2014–2019, grant
number 339382). We thank the other project members – Katherina
Kinzel, Johannes Steizinger, and Niels Wildschut – for their support.
Input from Delia Belleri and Anne-Kathrin Koch was also crucial. This
is our third volume with Routledge, and we greatly appreciate the
editors’ support of our work.