The Traditional Understanding
Although a key issue in contemporary times, relativism dates back to the beginnings of Western philosophy. As Baghramian (2015) notes, the earliest documented source on relativism can be traced back to Plato’s account of the Sophist Philosopher Protagoras of Abdera (490-420BC) who, during a period of increased contact between people of different cultures in ancient Athens, claimed that “Man is the measure of all things; of the things that are, that they are; and of the things that are not, that they are not” (p. 233).
While it is unclear whether Protagoras’s comment was necessarily relativist in the way that relativism is used to attack his ideas today (Marc & Curd, 2000), Plato interpreted Protagoras as meaning …show more content…
Instead, Person A would be justified in believing that the animal was a sheep relative to her epistemic system or principles of belief that are accepted by Person A and her community. At the same time, there exist mutually incompatible epistemic systems since Person B’s principles of belief that justify Person B in believing that the animal was a dog mean that regardless of what the animal actually is, Persons A and B could both reasonably arrive at different …show more content…
It should be noted that while clarifying relativism for the purpose of this paper’s arguments these principles remain open to the possibility for revision if need be.
Like other forms of relativism, the first principle of moderate epistemic relativism rejects the idea of epistemic fixity and universality arguing that there is more than one knowledge system, and that all knowledge systems are situated in a specific contexts (the principle of the many).
Second, as a ‘conceptual space’ between the limits of cognition and what cannot be cognized, moderate epistemic relativism argues that no knowledge system is complete, meaning that in theory there can be no such thing as epistemological hegemony (the principle of incompleteness). Since no knowledge system is able to perceive what is not conceptualized, other standards and systems can never be completely
Although a key issue in contemporary times, relativism dates back to the beginnings of Western philosophy. As Baghramian (2015) notes, the earliest documented source on relativism can be traced back to Plato’s account of the Sophist Philosopher Protagoras of Abdera (490-420BC) who, during a period of increased contact between people of different cultures in ancient Athens, claimed that “Man is the measure of all things; of the things that are, that they are; and of the things that are not, that they are not” (p. 233).
While it is unclear whether Protagoras’s comment was necessarily relativist in the way that relativism is used to attack his ideas today (Marc & Curd, 2000), Plato interpreted Protagoras as meaning …show more content…
Instead, Person A would be justified in believing that the animal was a sheep relative to her epistemic system or principles of belief that are accepted by Person A and her community. At the same time, there exist mutually incompatible epistemic systems since Person B’s principles of belief that justify Person B in believing that the animal was a dog mean that regardless of what the animal actually is, Persons A and B could both reasonably arrive at different …show more content…
It should be noted that while clarifying relativism for the purpose of this paper’s arguments these principles remain open to the possibility for revision if need be.
Like other forms of relativism, the first principle of moderate epistemic relativism rejects the idea of epistemic fixity and universality arguing that there is more than one knowledge system, and that all knowledge systems are situated in a specific contexts (the principle of the many).
Second, as a ‘conceptual space’ between the limits of cognition and what cannot be cognized, moderate epistemic relativism argues that no knowledge system is complete, meaning that in theory there can be no such thing as epistemological hegemony (the principle of incompleteness). Since no knowledge system is able to perceive what is not conceptualized, other standards and systems can never be completely