Repository | Book

This book confronts the threats of epistemic relativism and Pyrrhonian scepticism to analytic philosophy.  Epistemic relativists reject absolute notions of knowledge and justification, while sceptics claim that knowledge and justification of any kind are unattainable.  If either of these views is correct, then there can be no objective basis for thinking that one set of methods does a better job of delivering accurate information than any other set of methods. Philosophers have generally sought to resist these threats by respondingto the argument that seems to motivate both positions: the Agrippan trilemma.  Steven Bland argues that this is a mistaken strategy. He surveys the most influential responses to the Agrippan trilemma, and shows that none of them succeeds in undermining epistemic relativism.  Bland also offers a new, dialectical strategy of challenging epistemic relativism by uncovering how epistemic methods depend on one another for their applications.  By means of this novel analysis, the book concludes that there are principled reasons to prefer naturalistic to non-naturalistic methods, even if these reasons do little to ease the threat of scepticism.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-94673-3

Full citation:

Introduction

Bland Steven

1-14

The principal argument for epistemic relativism

Bland Steven

15-33

Epistemic relativism in the analytic tradition

Bland Steven

35-61

Foundationalism and coherentism

Bland Steven

63-85

Externalism

Bland Steven

87-105

Particularism and methodism

Bland Steven

107-128

The charge of incoherence

Bland Steven

129-144

The Wittgensteinian position

Bland Steven

145-173

A dialectical strategy

Bland Steven

175-214

Conclusions

Bland Steven

215-218