Abstract
The threats of scepticism and epistemic relativism are uncoupled in Kant’s transcendental idealism, which embraces a radical scepticism, while seeking to provide an absolute justification for the methods of the exact sciences. After this position was definitively undermined by developments within the exact sciences, Carnap’s logical positivism and Kuhn’s pragmatism took turns replacing it as the dominant philosophies of science of the twentieth century. Interestingly, both of these positions can be understood as endorsing the principal argument for epistemic relativism. This chapter examines these relativistic readings of Carnap and Kuhn, without endorsing them, in an effort to reveal that epistemic relativism is an endogenous threat to analytic philosophy.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
The details of Kant’s understanding of Newtonian physics are lucidly presented in Friedman (1992, Ch. 3).
- 2.
Goldfarb and Ricketts do not label Carnap a relativist, and they may resist the label. As I will argue in the next section, however, the deflationary argument for the principle of tolerance is indistinguishable from the principal argument for epistemic relativism.
- 3.
For a classic articulation of this problem, see Putnam ( 1983).
- 4.
See also Carnap (1963b, 917):
Thus I would interpret, e.g., the principle of verifiability (or of confirmability), or the empiricist principle that there is no synthetic a priori, as consisting of proposals for certain explications (often not stated explicitly) and of certain assertions which, on the basis of these explications, are analytic.
- 5.
See, for example, Carnap (1937, 44):
Dubislav has pointed out that the concept [of analyticity] is a relative one; it must always be referred to a particular system of assumptions and methods of reasoning (primitive sentences and rules of inference), that is to say, in our terminology, to a particular language.
- 6.
Carnap first draws this distinction in Carnap (1950).
- 7.
For an insightful discussion of the relativist threat facing Carnap , see Friedman ( 2002, Part One, III).
- 8.
Perhaps these are reasons enough to reject the deflationary reading of Carnap ’s tolerance. For thorough arguments along these lines, see Doyle (2013).
- 9.
It is worth noting that this insight is indistinguishable from the conventionalist doctrine of the Logical Positivists explained above. For this reason, Kuhn and Carnap ’s views of scientific progress are more similar than Kuhn thinks. For more on the similarities between Carnap and Kuhn, see Friedman ( 2003).
- 10.
- 11.
- 12.
Friedman (2002, Part One, III) does an admirable job of showing how Carnap and Kuhn’s views of scientific rationality motivate epistemic relativism.
- 13.
- 14.
Kuhn makes this argument in the Postscript to the second edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1970) and in “Objectivity, Value Judgement and Theory Choice” (1977), but he also makes it in the first edition of SSR (153–159). Thus, as Markus Seidel points out, Kuhn does not abandon radical epistemic relativism in favour of a more moderate doctrine in the wake of the criticism that he faced after publishing SSR in 1962 (Seidel 2013).
- 15.
Kuhn himself describes his position as a neo-Kantian one in Kuhn (1979).
- 16.
For a criticism of Kuhn’s attempt to mitigate the relativism implied by his account of scientific revolutions, see Friedman ( 2002, Part One, III).
- 17.
As I noted in the previous chapter, it is unfair to see Bellarmine as a radical cleric who gives no credence whatsoever to Galileo’s empirical arguments. This characterization is much more apt when applied to the Papal Qualifiers whose deliberations led to Bellarmine’s intervention. Since this observation changes nothing of substance in Rorty’s argument, though, I have followed his lead in focusing on Bellarmine.
- 18.
Indeed, Rorty draws a distinction between ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ discourse that is modelled on Kuhn’s distinction between normal and revolutionary science, but that “…cuts across the distinction between science and nonscience” (Rorty 1979, 333).
- 19.
This use of Kuhn’s work to support a general epistemic relativism can also be found in Barnes (1982, 10).
References
Baghramian, M. (2004). Relativism. London: Routledge.
Barnes, B. (1982). T.S. Kuhn and social science. London: Macmillan.
Carnap, R. (1936 [1953]). Testability and meaning. In H. Feigl & M. Brodbeck (Eds.), Readings in the philosophy of science (pp. 47–92). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Carnap, R. (1937). The logical syntax of language (A. Smeaton, Trans.). Chicago: Open Court.
Carnap, R. (1939). Foundations of logic and mathematics, international encyclopedia of unified science 1(3). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Carnap, R. (1950). Empiricism, semantics, and ontology. Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 4, 20–40.
Carnap, R. (1963a). Intellectual autobiography. In P. A. Schilpp (Ed.), The philosophy of Rudolf Carnap (pp. 3–84). La Salle, IL: Open Court.
Carnap, R. (1963b). Replies and systematic expositions. In P. A. Schilpp (Ed.), The philosophy of Rudolf Carnap (pp. 859–1013). La Salle, IL: Open Court.
Doyle, E. (2013). The methodological roles of tolerance and conventionalism in the philosophy of mathematics. PhD dissertation, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada.
Duhem, P. (1954). The aim and structure of physical theory (P. P. Wiener, Trans.). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Friedman, M. (1992). Kant and the exact sciences. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Friedman, M. (2002). Dynamics of Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Friedman, M. (2003). Kuhn and logical empiricism. In T. Nickles (Ed.), Thomas Kuhn (pp. 19–44). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goldfarb, W. (1996). The philosophy of mathematics in early positivism. In R. N. Giere & A. W. Richardson (Eds.), Origins of logical empiricism (pp. 213–230). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Goldfarb, W. (1997). Semantics in Carnap: A rejoinder to Alberto Coffa. Philosophical Topics, 25(2), 51–66.
Goldfarb, W., & Ricketts, T. (1992). Carnap and the philosophy of mathematics. In D. Bell & W. Vossenkuhl (Eds.), Science and subjectivity (pp. 61–78). Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
Kuhn, T. (1970 [1996]). The structure of scientific revolutions (3rd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kuhn, T. (1977). The essential tension: Selected studies in scientific tradition and change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kuhn, T. (1979). Metaphor in science. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (pp. 409–419). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lakatos, I. (1978). Falsification and the methodology of scientific research programmes. In J. Worrall & G. Currie (Eds.), The methodology of scientific research programmes: Philosophical papers (Vol. 1, pp. 8–101). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Neurath, O., Carnap, R., & Reichenbach, H. (1929 [1973]). The scientific conception of the world: The Vienna Circle. In Empiricism and sociology (M. Neurath & R. S. Cohen, Trans., pp. 299–318). Dordrecht: Reidel.
Putnam, H. (1983). Philosophers and human understanding. In Realism and reason: Philosophical papers (Vol. 3). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ricketts, T. (1994). Carnap’s principle of tolerance, empiricism, and conventionalism. In P. Clark (Ed.), Reading Putnam (pp. 176–200). Oxford: Blackwell.
Rorty, R. (1979). Philosophy and the mirror of nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Sankey, H. (2011). Epistemic relativism and the problem of the criterion. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science A, 42, 562–570.
Sankey, H. (2012). Scepticism, relativism and the argument from the criterion. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science A, 43, 182–190.
Sankey, H. (2013). Methodological incommensurability and epistemic relativism. Topoi, 32(1), 33–41.
Scheffler, I. (1967). Science and subjectivity. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
Schlick, M. (1920). Space and time in contemporary physics (3rd ed., H. L. Brose, Trans.). New York: Oxford University Press.
Seidel, M. (2013). Between relativism and absolutism?—The failure of Kuhn’s moderate relativism. In M. Hoeltje, T. Spitzley, & W. Spohn (Eds.), Was dürfen wir glauben? Was sollen wir tun? Sektionsbeiträge des achten internationalen Kongresses der Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie E.V. (pp. 172–185). http://duepublico.uni-duisburg-essen.de/servlets/DerivateServlet./Derivate-33085/GAP8_Proceedings.pdf.
Shapere, D. (1984). Reason and the search for knowledge. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Siegel, H. (1987). Relativism refuted: A critique of contemporary epistemological relativism. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bland, S. (2018). Epistemic Relativism in the Analytic Tradition. In: Epistemic Relativism and Scepticism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94673-3_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94673-3_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-94672-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-94673-3
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)