English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

The objective of the paper is to seek clarification on the relationship between epistemic relativism and scepticism. It is not infrequent to come across contemporary discussions of epistemic relativism that rely upon aspects of scepticism and, vice versa, discussions of scepticism drawing upon aspects of relativism. Our goal is to highlight the difference(s) between them by illustrating (1) that some arguments thought to be against relativism are actually against scepticism, (2) that there are different ways of understanding the relationship between relativism and scepticism, and (3) that a commitment to either relativism or scepticism does not entail commitment to the other. The paper focuses upon the works of Peter Unger and Paul Boghossian to show how this terrain can be variously conceived and to illustrate that Boghossian’s conception of the landscape is incorrect. It is not uncommon to see contemporary philosophers who are engaged in epistemological discussions of our cognitive states, such as beliefs, treating scepticism and relativism as epistemic siblings. In Varieties of Relativism, for example, Rom Harré and Michael Krausz divide relativism into ‘two broad flavours – the sceptical and the permissive’ where the former states that there cannot be any true belief and the latter asserts that there are many mutually incompatible true beliefs. (Harré and Krausz 1996, p. 3) Or, to give another example, in Farewell to Reason, Paul Feyerabend describes epistemic relativism as the doctrine that, ‘For every statement, theory, point of view believed (to be true) with good reasons there exist arguments showing a conflicting alternative to be at least as good, or even better’, which, according to him, was the mainstay of the ‘ancient sceptics to achieve mental and social peace’. (Feyerabend 1987, p. 76) In fact, FORUM PHIlOsOPHIcUM 15(2010), pp. 103-118 104 MAJID AMINI AND cHRIsTOPHER cAlDWEll Feyerabend goes so far as to assert that a rejection of his version of epistemic relativism ‘would require detailed empirical/conceptual/historical analyses none of which are found in the customary objections to scepticism and relativism.’ (Feyerabend 1987, p. 77) Thus, on such readings, there is a close kinship between scepticism and relativism, and, yet, the question that forms the core of this paper is whether scepticism and relativism do actually belong to the same epistemic pedigree. Part of the interest in this question lies in the issue of whether a rejection or acceptance of one of these epistemological positions would correspondingly commit one to the rejection or acceptance of the other. From an historical perspective, doubts about man’s ability to attain knowledge have an ancestry that is conventionally traced back at least to Xenophanes in the sixth century Bc. (sedley 1989) similarly, objections to sensory knowledge were formulated by Parmenides in the first part of the fifth century Bc and soon afterwards by his followers Zeno of Elea and Melissus, and, with reservations, by the atomist Democritus. Yet, Pyrrho of Elis, living in the fourth and third centuries Bc, is traditionally designated as the father of ancient scepticism as attested, for example, by sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Pyrrhonism: ‘Pyrrho appears to us to have applied himself to scepticism more thoroughly and more conspicuously than his predecessors.’ (Bury 1933, pp. 5-7) like socrates, Pyrrho himself did not write anything, but became the symbolic figurehead for a new way of doing philosophy. (Annas and Barnes 1994, pp. ix-xv) He is reputed to have simply maintained that nothing can be known – without the subtlety of letting this thesis qualify itself – and, consistently, to have rejected all speculation about the world as it really is as a time-wasting source of anxiety. The latter claim especially has a direct impact on one’s understanding of the relationship between scepticism and relativism that is going to be discussed shortly. The point of this genealogical detour on scepticism is to highlight, contrary to Feyerabend’s historical reconstruction of the ancient sceptics, a couple of crucial differences between scepticism and relativism. According to sextus, the essence of Pyrrhonian or ancient scepticism is constituted by the ‘ability to set out oppositions among things which appear and are thought of in any way at all, an ability by which, because of the equipollence in the opposed objects and accounts, we come first to suspension of judgement and afterwards to tranquillity.’ (Annas and Barnes 1994, p. 4) In other words, the primary goal of scepticism is to suspend judgement and thereby to refrain from assigning truth or falsity to our cognitive states altogether. sextus’ description delineates a path that the sceptic systemati105 EPIsTEMIc scEPTIcIsM AND RElATIVIsM cally treads in each case from an opposition or conflict of opinions to epistemic suspension and finally to psychological freedom from disturbance. On this model of scepticism, the Pyrrhonian odyssey starts when the sceptic is investigating some question or field of enquiry and finds that opinions conflict as to where the truth lies. The hope of the search, at least in the early stages of the sceptic’s quest for enlightenment, is that tranquillity will be achieved if only one can discover the rights and wrongs of the matter and give assent to truth and thus avoid falsity.1 The difficulty for the sceptic is that, in any matter, things appear differently to different people according to one or another of a variety of circumstances. But, conflicting appearances cannot be equally true and thereby equally real. Therefore, the sceptic needs a criterion of truth to ascertain what to accept and what to reject. It is at this juncture that the Pyrrhonian sceptic argues that there is no intellectually satisfactory criterion we can trust and use, and, hence, the sceptic is left with the conflicting appearances and the conflicting opinions based upon them, unable to find any objective and impartial reason to privilege one belief or opinion over another. consequently, if the sceptic can neither accept them all, because they are in conflict with one another, nor make a choice between them for lack of an objectively reliable standard or criterion, he cannot accept any. Now, compare this sceptical suspension of judgement to, for example, Harré and Krausz’s characterisation of relativism: ‘all points of view are equally privileged, all descriptions are true and all assessments of value are equally valid.’ (Harré and Krausz 1996, p. 3) Here, there are two important contrasts between ancient scepticism and relativism that need to be noted. First, as indicated in this definition of relativism, the relativist has no hesitation in ascribing truth to mutually incompatible statements or beliefs; for relativists, truth is a matter of epistemic egalitarianism. In contradistinction, at the end of his scepsis or enquiry, the Pyrrhonian enquirer feels obliged to withhold judgement about truth. For the sceptic, when it comes to truth, the only option is to suspend judgement completely. secondly, as Myles Burnyeat poignantly points out, the ancient sceptic’s argument is in a very fundamental manner dependent upon the concept of truth, and no stage of the sceptical sequence from opposition to suspension and then ultimately to tranquillity would make sense without a substantial understanding of that notion. (Burnyeat 1989) Basically, when the sceptic doubts that anything is true, the absence of truth is set up against real existence. In other words, for the sceptic, statements that merely record how things 1 Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Book I, chapter VI. 106 MAJID AMINI AND cHRIsTOPHER cAlDWEll appear are not in question; strictly speaking, they are not called true or false. Truth only applies to statements asserting that things are thus and so in reality. In the controversy between ancient sceptics and their opponents over whether any truth exists at all, as Burnyeat remarks, ‘the issue is whether any proposition or class of propositions can be accepted as true of a real objective world as distinct from mere appearance.’ (Burnyeat 1989, p. 25) It is indeed a fact of central importance that truth, in the sceptic’s vocabulary, is closely tied to real existence as contrasted with appearance; whereas, for the relativist, truth is equally applicable to ‘mere appearance’. Thus, on the basis of these decisive disparities, it may not be amiss to say that it is rather simplistic, if not outright incorrect, to presume that there is a close connection between scepticism and relativism where one of them can be easily inferred from the other. Interestingly enough, it is not just in relation to ancient scepticism that we come across these divergences but also in the context of contemporary scepticism. Indeed, one can see the same type of concerns, claims and contrasts as in Pyrrhonian scepticism, albeit expressed and formulated differently, in present-day epistemological works such as Peter Unger’s. UNGER ON scEPTIcIsM AND RElATIVIsM In a series of papers culminating with the publication of Ignorance: A Case for Scepticism, Unger came into prominence as one of the most radical sceptical epistemologists of his generation. He lays out the core of his sceptical project as ‘the thesis that no one ever knows anything about anything’, and, like his Pyrrhonian predecessors’ aim to achieve tranquillity, he endeavours to show that a consequence of this type of pervasive ignorance is that we can have no realistic emotional ties to anything: ‘if nobody ever really knows anything, then nobody will ever be angry, or happy, or surprised about anything.’ (Unger 1975, pp. 1 and 186) What is, however, more germane and significant for the topic of this paper is Unger’s subsequent shift from scepticism to relativism in his Philosophical Relativity and how he attempts to chart the important differences between the two positions. To set the scene

Does “One Cannot Know” Entail “Everyone is Right”? The Relationship between Epistemic Scepticism and Relativism