2. Knowledge and relativism Michael Lacewing

What is knowledge? Justified true belief? Reliable true belief? Warranted true belief? True belief reached by acts of intellectual virtue? These definitions all hold on to the idea of truth – but should we talk of knowledge as simply ‘justified belief’?

No truth? ‘No one knows the truth’ What reason is there to believe this? How does the person saying this know that no one knows anything? ‘There is no truth’ is usually a denial of ‘objective’ truth. What does this mean? Implication: either knowledge does not require objective truth or knowledge does require objective truth, so we do not have knowledge

No ‘objective’ truth ‘There is no truth’ means that there is only ‘true for me’, ‘true for you’, ‘true for them’. But what does this mean? ‘True for them’ = ‘they believed it’, e.g. some ancient cultures believed stars were pinpricks in the fabric of heaven, letting light through from beyond They believed it - but was it true? Don’t we all have false beliefs? ‘I will never get cancer’ as a cure?

Total subjectivism ‘All truth is subjective’ is self- contradictory If I reject this claim, then it is not ‘true for me’ that truth is subjective So there is objective truth ‘All truth is subjective’ is irrational All beliefs are equally ‘true’, there is no justification, and all debate is therefore completely pointless The belief that this is used to defend is no better than its negation.

Knowledge and certainty Someone might say that there is truth, but no one knows it, because there is no certainty Does knowledge need to be certain, not simply warranted? If we require certainty for knowledge, and so we reject knowledge, what should we use to judge between beliefs that are ‘better’ or ‘worse’?

Fallibilism Knowledge does not require certainty Everyone is fallible Knowledge goes better with intellectual humility than arrogance (epistemic virtues) That everyone is fallible doesn’t mean that everyone is equally fallible!

Relativism in context Some areas of enquiry may not yield objective knowledge, e.g. morality But this is surprisingly hard to establish, once we recognise the points above Is there no moral truth or is it just incredibly difficult to discover? Is there no moral truth or should we simply be respectful in disagreement? Is there no moral truth or is it sensitive to circumstance?

-isms Objectivism: there is objective truth Scepticism: our usual warrants supporting beliefs do not provide knowledge Relativism: knowledge is relative to culture, concepts, theories etc. Various forms: e.g. truth is relative, justification is relative… Fallibilism: knowledge does not require certainty, i.e. while we could be mistaken, if our belief is true and warranted, it counts as knowledge