Relativism in context

LAERA, RODRIGO

Aufklärung

Universidade Federal da Paraíba

Año: 2019 vol. 6 p. 11 - 24

2358-8470

Thepresent paper introduces four fundamental issues within the framework ofepistemic relativism: (a) the lack of precision in the concept of knowing; (b) the changes in the demandsbetween context of use and of evaluation; (c) the violation of the realdisagreement intuition; and (d) the incommensurability of epistemic frameworks.The answer to these problems should revolve around the idea that knowledge issubject to the interests and intentions of individuals in everyday life. Themain thesis thus consists in that it is necessary to avoid the impression thatepistemic frameworks are some sort of watertight compartment. In this way,relativism may be defended from the viewpoint that epistemic frameworks areartificial generalizations that may be relevant to the attribution ofknowledge. In this respect, it must be borne in mind that some norms are sharedby different epistemic frameworks, and that each time a given context orcircumstance takes place, the same norm may be applied.