Relativism, roughly put, is the view that truth and falsity, right andwrong, standards of reasoning, and procedures of justification areproducts of differing conventions and frameworks of assessment andthat their authority is confined to the context giving rise to them.More precisely, “relativism” covers views which maintainthat—at a high level of abstraction—at least some class ofthings have the properties they have (e.g., beautiful, morally good,epistemically justified) notsimpliciter, but only relativeto a given framework of assessment (e.g., local cultural norms,individual standards), and correspondingly, that the truth of claimsattributing these properties holds only once the relevant framework ofassessment is specified or supplied. Relativists characteristicallyinsist, furthermore, that if something is onlyrelatively so,then there can be no framework-independent vantage point from whichthe matter of whether the thing in question is so can beestablished.

Relativism has been, in its various guises, both one of the mostpopular and most reviled philosophical doctrines of our time.Defenders see it as a harbinger of tolerance and the only ethical andepistemic stance worthy of the open-minded and tolerant. Detractorsdismiss it for its alleged incoherence and uncritical intellectualpermissiveness. Debates about relativism permeate the whole spectrumof philosophical sub-disciplines. From ethics to epistemology, scienceto religion, political theory to ontology, theories of meaning andeven logic, philosophy has felt the need to respond to this heady andseemingly subversive idea. Discussions of relativism often also invokeconsiderations relevant to the very nature and methodology ofphilosophy and to the division between the so-called “analyticand continental” camps in philosophy. And yet, despite a longhistory of debate going back to Plato and an increasingly large bodyof writing, it is still difficult to come to an agreed definition ofwhat, at its core, relativism is, and what philosophical import ithas. This entry attempts to provide a broad account of the many waysin which “relativism” has been defined, explained,defended and criticized.

• 1. What is Relativism?
  • 1.1 The co-variance definition
  • 1.2 Relativism by contrast
  • 1.3 The hidden parameter definition
  • 1.4 The scope of relativism
    • 1.4.1 Global vs. Local Relativism
    • 1.4.2 Strong vs. Weak Relativism
• 2. Why Relativism?
  • 2.1 Empirical claims of diversity and their consequences
  • 2.2 Disagreements and intractability
  • 2.3 No neutral ground
  • 2.4 Underdetermination of theory by data
  • 2.5 Context Dependence
  • 2.6 The Principle of Tolerance
• 3. A Brief History of an Old Idea
• 4. Varieties of Relativism
  • 4.1 Cultural relativism
  • 4.2 Conceptual relativism
  • 4.3 Relativism about truth or alethic relativism
    • 4.3.1 Alethic Relativism and the charge of self-refutation.
  • 4.4 Epistemic relativism
    • 4.4.1 Relativism about Rationality
    • 4.4.2 Relativism about Logic
    • 4.4.3 Relativism about Science
    • 4.4.4 Social Constructionism
  • 4.5 Moral Relativism
• 5. New Relativism
  • 5.1 The individuating features of New Relativism
  • 5.2 Truth Relativism and predicates of personal taste
    • 5.2.1 Lasersohn (2005) and thejudge parameter
    • 5.2.2 Kölbel and Faultless Disagreement
    • 5.2.3 Moral relativism
  • 5.3 Truth relativism and epistemic modals
  • 5.4 Truth relativism and future contingents
  • 5.5 Truth relativism and knowledge ascriptions
  • 5.6 General Objections to New Relativism
    • 5.6.1 Relativism and assertion
    • 5.6.2 Simplicity
• 6. Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. What is Relativism?

The label “relativism” has been attached to a wide rangeof ideas and positions which may explain the lack of consensus on howthe term should be defined (see MacFarlane 2022). The profusion of theuse of the term “relativism” in contemporary philosophymeans that there is no ready consensus on any one definition. Here arethree prominent, but not necessarily incompatible, approaches:

1.1 The co-variance definition

A standard way of defining and distinguishing between different typesof relativism is to begin with the claim that a phenomenonx(e.g., values, epistemic, aesthetic and ethical norms, experiences,judgments, and even the world) is somehow dependent on and co-varieswith some underlying, independent variabley (e.g.,paradigms, cultures, conceptual schemes, belief systems, language).The type of dependency relativists propose has a bearing on thequestion of definitions. Let us take some examples.

(a)

Justice is relative to local norms.

(b)

Truth is relative to a language-game.

(c)

The measurement of temperature is relative to the scale weuse.

Each of (a)–(c) exhibits a relation of dependence where a changein the independent variabley will result in variations inthe dependent variablex. However, of the three examplescited above, normally only (a) and (b) are deemed relevant tophilosophical discussions of relativism, for one main attraction ofrelativism is that it offers a way of settling (or explaining away)what appear to be profound disagreements on questions of value,knowledge and ontology and the relativizing parameter often involvespeople, their beliefs, cultures or languages.

Theco-variance definition proceeds by asking the dualquestions: (i) what is relativized? and (ii) what is it relativizedto? The first question enables us to distinguish forms of relativismin terms of theirobjects, for example, relativism abouttruth, goodness, beauty, and their subject matters, e.g., science,law, religion. The answer to the second question individuates forms ofrelativism in terms of theirdomains or frames ofreference—e.g., conceptual frameworks, cultures, historicalperiods, etc. Such classifications have been proposed by Haack (1996),O’Grady (2002), Baghramian (2004), Swoyer (2010), and Baghramian& Coliva (2019). The following table classifies differentrelativistic positions according to what is being relativized, or itsobjects, and what is being relativized to, or its domains.

Table 1 reflects the availability of fine-grained distinctions betweendifferent forms of relativism as functions of both objects(x) and domains (y) of relativization. In practice,however, much contemporary discussions of relativism focus onsubjectivism, historicism, cultural relativism and conceptualrelativism, along the axis ofy, and cognitive/epistemicrelativism, ethical or moral relativism and aesthetic relativism,along the axis ofx. As we shall see in§5, New Relativism, where theobjects of relativization (in theleft column) are utterance tokens expressing claimsaboutcognitive norms, moral values, etc. and the domain of relativizationis the standards of an assessor, has also been the focus of muchrecent discussion.

1.2 Relativism by contrast

A second approach to defining relativism casts its net more widely byfocusing primarily on what relativistsdeny. Definednegatively, relativism amounts to the rejection of a number ofinterconnected philosophical positions. Traditionally, relativism iscontrasted with:

Absolutism, the view that at least some truths or values inthe relevant domain apply to all times, places or social and culturalframeworks. They are universal and not bound by historical or socialconditions. Absolutism is often used as the key contrast idea torelativism.

Objectivism or the position that cognitive, ethical andaesthetic norms and values in general, but truth in particular, areindependent of judgments and beliefs at particular times and places,or in other words they are (non-trivially) mind-independent. Theanti-objectivist on the other hand, denies that there is such thing assimply being ‘true’, ‘good’,‘tasty’ or ‘beautiful’ but argues that we cancoherently discuss such values only in relation to parameters thathave something to do with our mental lives.

Monism or the view that, in any given area or topic subjectto disagreement, there can be no more than one correct opinion,judgment, or norm. The relativist often wishes to allow for aplurality of equally valid values or even truths.

Realism, when defined in such a way that it entails both theobjectivity and singularity of truth, also stands in opposition torelativism.

Relativism in this negative sense is a prominent feature of the workof the relativistsmalgré eux such as Richard Rorty(1979) and Jacques Derrida (1974). Also, as Kusch (2021) notes,relativism in a negative sense, particularly as it involves arejection of absolutism, is central to relativists approaches in thehistory of the philosophy of science. What justifies the appellation‘relativist’, rather than ‘skeptic’, is notonly these philosophers’ suspicion of the possibility ofobjectivity but their insistence on the role of socio-historical,psychological and textual contexts in accounts of ‘truth’and ‘knowledge’ claims.

1.3 The hidden parameter definition

What also binds various forms of relativism is an underlying idea thatclaims to truth, knowledge or justification have an implicit, maybeeven unnoticed, relationship to a parameter or domain. Gilbert Harman(1975), Robert Nozick (2001), and Crispin Wright (2008b; 2023) areamong the philosophers to propose versions of this thesis. PaulBoghossian summarizes the position this way:

the relativist about a given domain,D, purports to havediscovered that thetruths ofD involve anunexpected relation to a parameter. (Boghossian 2006b:13)

To take an example, moral relativism, according to this approach, isthe claim that the truth or justification of beliefs with moralcontent is relative to specific moral codes. So the sentence “Itis wrong to sell people as slaves” is elliptical for “Itis wrong to sell people as slavesrelative to the moral codeof …”. Or alternatively, as Kusch (2010) formulatesthe idea on behalf of the relativist: “It iswrong-relative-to-the-moral-code-of-…” to sellpeople as slaves. The resulting sentence(s) turns out to be true,according to the relativist, depending on how we fill in the“…”. So, “It is wrong to sell people asslaves” comes out true relative to the moral code of the UnitedNations Charter of Human Rights and false relative to the moral codeof ancient Greece. The justifying thought is that judgments about themorality of slavery, or any other ethical issue, are based ondiffering conventions, and there is no universal or objectivecriterion for choosing among differing competing socio-historicallyconstituted conventions. Moreover, as a corollary of this approach,there is no truth of the matter of whether it is wrong to sell peopleas slaves,independently of the specification of somestandard. Thus on the hidden parameter account, a consequence is thatthe relevant claims will be true, if at all, only relative to someparameter.

This particular approach to relativism is often expressed inexplicitly linguistic terms and is favored by philosophers interestedin the semantic dimensions of relativism. The claim is that predicatessuch as “is true”, “is rational”, “isright”, “is good” etc. in a natural language havethe apparent logical form of one-place predicates, but their surfacegrammatical form is misleading, because upon further investigationthey prove to be elliptical for two-place predicates such as “istrue relative to…”, “is right according to”,etc., (of course, where such predicates are available). Relativism,according to this approach, is the claim that a statement of the form“A isP” within a given domain (e.g.,science, ethics, metaphysics, etc.) is elliptical for the statement“A isP in relation toC”,whereA stands for an assertion, belief, judgment or action,P stands for a predicate such as “true”,“beautiful”, “right”, “rational”,“logical”, “known” etc., andC standsfor a specific culture, epistemic framework, language, belief-system,etc.

The three approaches outlined here are compatible and sometimescomplementary. A relativistic thesis as captured by the approachoutlined in§1.1 for instance, will also be relativistic in at least one of thenegative senses outlined in§1.2. Moreover, as we shall see, since various subdivisions of relativismappearing intable 1 could, with appropriate modification, be expressed as claims aboutthetruth of sentences falling in a particular domain, thenthe hidden predicate approach is applicable to them as well. (See§5 for a more detailed way to give expression to the hidden parameterinsight within recent work in the philosophy of language.)

1.4 The scope of relativism

A further consideration relevant to defining relativism is itsscope.

1.4.1 Global vs. Local Relativism

The basic idea of global relativism is captured by the oft-repeatedslogan “all is relative”. The claim is that all beliefs,regardless of their subject matter, are true only relative to aframework or parameter. Local relativists, by contrast, limit theirclaim of relativization to self-contained areas of discourse, e.g.,ethics, aesthetics and taste but argue that, for instance, scientifictruths are not suitable candidates for a relativistic understanding(but also see§4.4.3). It is worth noting that local relativisms, typically, are endorsed onthe basis of philosophical considerations connected to the kinds offeatures that are claimed to be relative (e.g., aestheticstandards, epistemic principles), or relatedly, semanticconsiderations to do with discourse where such features areattributed. Global relativism, by contrast, seems to be motivated notso much by considerations about particular features, but by moregeneral considerations about truth itself.

As we will see, global relativism is open to the charge ofinconsistency and self-refutation, for if all is relative, then so isrelativism. Local relativism is immune from this type of criticism, asit need not include its own statement in the scope of what is to berelativized. Unsurprisingly, local rather than global relativism ismuch more common within contemporary debates. There is also a questionmark on whether we could apply relativism to all truths in acompletely unrestricted way; for instance, Kölbel (2011) hasargued that claims such as “an object is beautiful and notbeautiful” and “an object is identical to itself”have to be excluded.

1.4.2 Strong vs. Weak Relativism

A further distinction is made betweenweak andstrongforms of relativism. Strong relativism is the claim that one andthe same belief or judgment may be true in one context (e.g., cultureor framework or assessment) and false in another.Weakrelativism is the claim that there may be beliefs or judgmentsthat are true in one framework but not true in a second simply becausethey are not available or expressible in the second. BernardWilliams’ “relativism of distance” (Williams 1985)and Ian Hacking’s (1982) defense of variability in styles ofreasoning are instances of weak relativism. Williams argues thatcertain concepts are only available to people who live a particularform of life. These are concepts that are not a part of what Williamscalls the “absolute conception of the world” and do notexpress truths that any rational creature, regardless of her culture,would in principle acknowledge. Truths that require these concepts fortheir formulation are expressible only in languages whose speakerstake part in that particular form of life. Such truths need not betrue in a relativized sense—true relative to some parameters,false relative to others; rather, such truths are perspectival: realbut visible only from a certain angle, i.e., for people who adopt acertain way of life. This weaker form of relativism, in so far as itdenies the universality of certain truth claims, is captured morereadily by the negative definition (§1.2) of relativism.

2. Why Relativism?

Interest in relativism as a philosophical doctrine goes back toancient Greece. In more recent decades, however, relativism has alsoproven popular not only as a philosophical position but also as anidea underwriting a normative—ethical and political-outlook.(see Bloom 1987, in particular the Introduction, and Kusch (ed.)2019). A number of philosophical considerations as well associo-historical developments explain the enduring interest in and themore recent popularity of relativism.

2.1 Empirical claims of diversity and their consequences

Data regarding diversity of belief systems, conceptual frameworks andways of life have frequently been used by philosophers andanthropologists alike to give credibility to philosophical argumentsfor relativism (For example see Hollis & Lukes 1982 and Wilson1970). The mere fact of empirical diversity does not lead torelativism, but, relativism as a philosophical doctrine, has oftenbeen taken as a natural position to adoptin light ofempirical diversity, in part, because relativism helps to make senseof such diversity without the burden of explaining who is inerror.

Descriptive relativism, an empirical and methodological positionadopted by social anthropologists, relies on ethnographic data tohighlight the paucity of universally agreed upon norms, values andexplanatory frameworks. From polygamy to cannibalism, from witchcraftto science we find major differences between the worldviews andoutlooks of individuals and groups. Descriptive relativism is oftenused as the starting point for philosophical debates on relativism ingeneral and cultural relativism in particular. The observed radicaldifferences among cultures, it is argued, show the need for arelativistic assessment of value systems and conceptual commitments.Some anti-relativist universalists, on the other hand, argue thatunderlying the apparent individual and cultural differences, there aresome core commonalities to all belief systems and socio-culturaloutlooks (e.g., Nussbaum 1997). But the relativistically inclinedrespond by first pointing to the seeming incommensurability of variousethical and conceptual frameworks and the variability of cognitivenorms and practices in difference cultures, and then, on this basis,maintain that the so-called “commonalities” beliesignificant differences. The anti-relativist may concede the point andinsist that where such disagreements exist, at most one view iscorrect and the rest mistaken. But in so far as we are reluctant toimpute widespread and systematic error to other cultures, or to ourown, relativism remains an attractive option. Descriptive relativismis also central to the brand of relativism advocated by thesociologists of scientific knowledge and other social constructionistswho argue that, even in the so-called “hard sciences”, wecannot escape the specter of irresolvable differences and evenincommensurability (see§4.4.3).

2.2 Disagreements and intractability

There is not only a markeddiversity of views on questions ofright and wrong, truth and falsehood, etc., but more significantly,many disputes arising from such differences seemintractable.There are instances of long-standing disagreement, such that thedisputants are very plausibly talking about the same subject matter(thus avoiding incommensurability) and genuinely disagreeing with eachother; and yet, no amount of information and debate enables them or usto resolve the disagreement. And moreover, in such cases, it can seemthat neither side seems to have made any obvious mistake (see, e.g.,Hales 2014 and Beddor 2019).

If well-informed, honest and intelligent people are unable to resolveconflicts of opinion, we should, some relativists argue, accept thatall parties to such disputes could be right and their conflictingpositions have equal claims to truth, each according to their ownperspective or point of view. Their disagreement is faultless(Kölbel 2004; Brogaard 2007; Hales 2014). Many relativisticallyinclined philosophers, (e.g., Max Kölbel (2004), Wright (2006)and John MacFarlane with terminological qualification (2014:133–136)) see the presence of faultless disagreements as centralto motivating and justifying relativism. The anti-relativists counterthat the very notion of a “faultless” disagreement isincompatible with our common understanding of what it means todisagree. It is a hallmark of disagreement, as commonly understood,that the parties involved find fault with the other sides’views. When people disagree at least one of them is making amistake or is failing to believe what he or she ought tobelieve given his or her cognitive aims. Relativism accordingly offersa revisionary account of what it means to disagree (e.g., MacFarlane2007, 2014; see§5 where the point has been discussed in some detail); but it is notclear if the account can explain what is left of a disagreement topreserve once we allow that both parties to a disagreement could beright (Carter 2013; Dreier 2009).

A sophisticated semantic version of relativism about truth, known astruth-relativism, and alternatively as “new relativism”,has been proposed in recent years and which attempts to deal with someof these issues (e.g., MacFarlane 2014 and Ferrari 2019 for anoverview). We will return to this variety of relativism in§5.

A different perspective on the move from disagreement to relativism isoffered in recent work by Carol Rovane (2012 and 2013), who rejectsthe prevailing consensus on what she calls the “disagreementintuition of relativism” in favor of an “alternativesintuition”. According to Rovane, relativism is motivated by theexistence of truths that cannot be embraced together, not because theycontradict and hence disagree with each other but because they are notuniversal truths. The example Rovane gives is conflict between abelief that deference to parents is morally obligatory in Indiantraditionalist sense and the belief that it is not morally obligatoryin the American individualist sense. Each belief is true within itsparticular ethical framework but the two beliefs cannot be conjoinedor embraced together. Or more generally, it is not possible both toexercise full autonomy and simultaneously be dedicated to one’scommunity and its norms. The underlying thought, for Rovane, is thatnot all truth-value-bearers are in logical relations to one another,that there are many noncomprehensive bodies of truths that cannot beconjoined.

Furthermore, some relativists argue that the pervasiveness ofseemingly intractable moral disagreements observed within and acrosscultures supports relativism, suggesting that deep ethical disputesindicate multiple, equally valid moral truths relative to differentframeworks. However, as Jussi Suikkanen (2024) notes, this view faceschallenges. For example, consider the longstanding debate betweenUtilitarians and Kantians over the footbridge trolleycase—whether to push a man to his death to save five others.Each side acknowledges that, relative to their own preferred ethicalframework, the action is either morally right or wrong (viz., rightfor the Utilitarians, wrong for the Kantians). If moral rightness andwrongness are entirely framework-relative, it becomes unclear howthese parties can genuinely disagree – even in this seeminglyparadigmatic and well documented example of moral disagreement –about the morality of the action. This suggests that (moral)relativism stands in tension with the very notion of substantive moraldisagreement we regularly appeal to describe our commitments tocontested moral claims.

What the above approaches, reasoning from disagreement to relativism,have in common is a commitment to the idea that truth andjustification (at least within some domain(s) of discourse) areplural, and that there could be more than one correct account of howthings stand such that their correctness is decidable only relative tosome framework of context of assessment.

2.3 No neutral ground

Additionally, the relativistically inclined find further support fortheir position in the contention that there is no meta-justificationof our evaluative or normative systems, that all justifications haveto start and end somewhere (see Sankey 2010 and 2011) and that thereare no higher-order or meta-level standards available for adjudicatingclashes between systems in a non-question begging way. Steven Hales,for instance, argues that faced with disagreement and givennon-neutrality, relativism is the most viablenon-skepticalconclusion to draw (Hales 2006: 98; 2014). Similar considerationsapply to attempts to anchor beliefs on secure foundations. Variousintellectual developments, leading to loss of old certainties in thescientific and social arena have strengthened the appeal of thispoint. The scientific revolution of the early 20^th century,brought about by, for instance, the advent of Relativity Theory andQuantum Mechanics and the loss of faith in lasting religious orpolitical truths (Marxism in particular), as well as the failure offoundationalist philosophical programs have been used in arguments tovindicate relativistic views (for relativism about science see§4.4.3). The relativists often argue that justifications are not onlyperspectival but also interest-relative and there is no neutral orobjective starting ground for any of our beliefs (see Seidel 2014;Carter 2015: ch. 4 and Siegel in Hales 2011: 205 for criticisms ofthis type of justification of relativism).

2.4 Underdetermination of theory by data

Pierre Duhem’s (1861–1916) thesis of underdetermination oftheory by data, the claim that empirical evidence alone is notadequate for providing justification for any given scientific theory,has played an important role in building up a case both for conceptualrelativism (§4.2) and for constructionism and relativism about science (§4.4.2 and§4.4.3). According to the underdetermination thesis, incompatible theories canbe consistent with available evidence. Relativism threatens wheneverconflicting theories or views appear to have equal claim to truth orjustification. The relativistically inclined use underdetermination toclaim that evidence could be brought to justify opposing explanationsand justification. The underdetermination thesis is also used tohighlight the absence of neutral starting points for our beliefs.Choices between incompatible but equally well-supported rivaltheories, it is argued, are often made based on interests and localpreferences rather than neutral universal grounds.

2.5 Context Dependence

Relativists argue that beliefs and values get their justification ortruth only relative to specific epistemic systems or practices (seeKuschforthcoming). Strong support for this view has comefrom social scientists and cultural theorist who focus on thesocio-cultural determinants of human beliefs and actions. The socialsciences, from their very inception, were hospitable to relativism.Indeed, August Comte, the father of sociology, claimed that a strengthof “positive sociology” was its “tendency to renderrelative the ideas which were at first absolute” (Comte 1976[1830–42]: 89). Comte also was responsible for the battle cry“all is relative”, but immediately and no doubtself-consciously contradicted himself by adding “andthat’s the only absolute”. Other social scientists, underthe influence of Karl Marx (1818–1883), Max Weber(1864–1920), and Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911), have givencredence to the idea that human beliefs and actions could beunderstood and evaluated only relative to their social and economicbackground and context (cf., Kinzel 2019). Beliefs, desires andactions, the argument goes, are never independent of a background ofcultural presuppositions, interests and values. We cannot step out ofour language, culture and socio-historical conditions to surveyreality from an Archimedean vantage point. Even perceptions are“theory-laden” and could vary between linguistic andcultural groupings. The sociological view that beliefs arecontext-dependent, in the sense that their context helps explain whypeople have the beliefs they do, has also been used to support what issometimes called “social” or “sociologicalrelativism” or the view that truth or correctness is relative tosocial contexts because we can both understand and judge beliefs andvalues only relative to the context out of which they arise.Context-dependence is also used to explain empirical observations ofdiversity in beliefs and values; different social contexts, theargument goes, give rise to differing, possibly incompatible norms andvalues.

2.6 The Principle of Tolerance

Advocates of relativism, particularly outside philosophical circles,often cite tolerance as a key normative reason for becoming arelativist. On this rationale, all ways of life and cultures areworthy of respect in their own terms, and it is a sign of unacceptableethnocentrism to presume that we could single out one outlook or pointof view as objectively superior to others. The Principle of Toleranceacquires an overtly socio-political form in the hand of PaulFeyerabend who maintains that “A free society is a society inwhich all traditions are given equal rights” (Feyerabend 1978:30). Anti-relativists find this normative advocacy of relativismunconvincing for two key kinds of reasons. Some anti-relativists(e.g., Rachels 2009) often appeal to cases at the limits (e.g.,toleration of heinous crimes) to show the thesis to be implausiblyoverpermissive (see§4.5). Others argue that if all values are relative then tolerance andmaximizing freedom are valuable only to those who have alreadyembraced them. Relativists counter that they are not defending aglobal version of relativism regarding all truths and justificationbut local versions concerning the ethics and politics of belief andthe usefulness of relativism in our attempt to become better, or atleast more flexible and less dogmatic, thinkers and more tolerantcitizens (e.g., Feyerabend 1978: 82–84). The anti-relativistscounter-argue that even if we grant that political tolerance is animportant value, and that accepting relativism would promote it, weshould never adopt philosophical views about the nature of truth orjustification simply because of their assumed good moral or politicalconsequences. Second, and more importantly: political toleration doesnot require the strong doctrine of philosophical relativism. Increasedawareness of diversity together with an awareness of the historicalcontingency of one’s own convictions will promote politicaltoleration just as effectively. As Knobe and Nichols point out, simplybeing made aware of radically different view points can lead to a:

…crisis akin to that of the [Christian] child confronted withreligious diversity… For the discovery of religious diversitycan prompt the thought that it’s in some sense accidental thatone happens to be raised in a Christian household rather than a Hinduhousehold. This kind of arbitrariness can make the child wonderwhether there’s any reason to think that his religious beliefsare more likely to be right than those of the Hindu child (Knobe &Nichols 2007: 11)

A separate strand of argument connecting tolerance and relativism hasappealed to the claimed virtues of relativism as a kind ofphilosophical stance (e.g., Bloor 2011; Baghramian 2019), onethat is characterised by anti-absolutist intellectual virtues such ascuriosity and anti-dogmatism. The idea that a relativistic stanceinvolves the manifesting of intellectually beneficial attitudes hasbeen championed by, along with Bloor, Feyerabend (1975) and Code(1995), the latter of whom have emphasised the value of emancipatorythinking, e.g., thinking that is not artificially constrained byattempts to “enforce a universalist truth”.

However, critics of relativism as a stance have countered sucharguments from ‘relativist virtues’ with arguments fromvice. Baghramian (2019), for instance, has suggested that even if wegrant that a relativist stance aligns with a cluster of intellectuallyvirtuous dispositions in thinking, the stance also has the consequenceof encouraging several corresponding vices, including intellectualinsouciance (e.g., Cassam 2019), and lack of conviction (Baghramian2019: 265; cf., Kusch 2019 for replies).

3. A Brief History of an Old Idea

The English term “relativism” came into usage only in the19^th Century. John Grote was probably the first to employit when inExploratio Philosophica (1865) he wrote:

The notion of the mask over the face of nature is…. what I havecalled “relativism”. If “the face of nature”is reality, then the mask over it, which is what theory gives us, isso much deception, and that is what relativism really comes to. (Grote1865: I.xi, 229).

Its German counterpart, “Relativismus”, has alonger history. Wilhelm Traugott Krug, who succeeded Kant in theUniversity of Königsberg in his philosophical lexicon, defines itas

the assumption that everything which we experience and think (theself, the idea of reason, truth, morality, religion etc.) is onlysomething relative, and therefore has no essential endurance and nouniversal validity. (Krug 2010 [1838]: 224)

Although the term “relativism” is of recent coinage,doctrines and positions, with some of the hallmarks of contemporaryrelativism, date back to the very beginnings of Western philosophy.(For various discussions about the emergence of relativism, see Kuschet al. 2022). Protagoras of Abdera (c. 490–420 BC) is oftenconsidered the first overt champion of relativism, and his dictum

Man (anthrôpos) is the measure (metron) of allthings (chrêmatôn), of the things which are, thatthey are, and of the things which are not, that they are not(tôn men ontôn hôs esti, tôn de mêontôn hôs ouk estin) (from Plato’sTheaetetus 152a 2–4)

its first battle-cry. According to Plato, Protagoras thought:

Each thing appears (phainesthai) to me, so it is for me, andas it appears to you, so it is for you—you and I each being aman. (Theaetetus 152a 6–8)

For instance, the same wind could be cold to one person and hot toanother. The extent to which Protagoras’s view, or at least whatcomes down to us from Plato, amounts to genuine relativism remainssomewhat controversial. As Burnyeat (1976b: 172) notes, SextusEmpiricus thought—though Burnyeat thinks mistakenly—thatthe Protagorean measure doctrine was to be understood as thesubjectivist thesis that everyappearance is true(simpliciter). This kind of radical subjectivism, though,quickly can be shown to turn on itself: it canappear thatthe thesis that “every appearance is true” is false. Andso this radical subjectivist interpretation, regardless of whether itis accurate, is as Sextus had thought, untenable. However, Plato alsoascribes a social or ethical dimension to Protagorean relativism whichseem to go beyond individualistic subjectivism. InTheaetetus172a 2–6 he says

what may or may not fittingly be done, of just and unjust, of what issanctioned by religion and what is not; and here the theory may beprepared to maintain that whatever viewa city takes on thesematters and establishes as its law or convention,is truth andfact for that city. In such matters, neither any individual norany city can claim superior wisdom. [emphasis added]

Plato’s attempted refutation of Protagoras, known asperitrope or “turning around”, is the first ofthe many attempts to show that relativism is self-refuting.

Protagorean relativism directly influenced the Pyrrhonian Skeptics,who saw the “man is the measure” doctrine as a precursorto their brand of skepticism. Sextus Empiricus, for instance, in his“Relativity Mode” states that judgments and observationsare relative to the person who makes them, to their context as well asthe object being observed and goes on to say,

since we have established in this way that everything is relative(pros ti), it is clear then that we shall not be able to saywhat an existing object is like in its own nature and purely, but onlywhat it appears to be like relative to something. (Sextus Empiricus PHI 140)

But the conclusion he draws favors skepticism rather than relativismas understood in modern philosophy, for he concludes, “Itfollows that we must suspend judgment about the nature ofobjects” (ibid.).

Glimpses of relativistic thinking were in evidence in Boethius(480–524) (see Marenbon 2003) as well as in the double truthdoctrine, or the view that religion and philosophy are separate and attimes conflicting sources of truth, originally found in Averroes(1126–1198) and the 13^th century Latin Averroists.However, the dominant belief in a singular and absolute revealed truthwithin a Christian framework, on the whole, made the medieval periodinhospitable to relativism. There was a renewed interest in bothrelativism and skepticism at the inception of modern philosophyinspired, in part, by Latin translations of Sextus Empiricus in the16^th century. Michel de Montaigne’s work(1533–1592), in common with others sympathetic towardsrelativism, ancient or contemporary, relies on accounts of farawaycultures to argue that “we have no other criterion of truth orright-reason than the example and form of the opinion and customs ofour own country” (Montaigne 1580 [1991: 152]) (but also seeFricker 2013 for a dissenting view). His advocacy of toleration, evenfor the cannibal, paved the way for not only the acceptance but thevalorization of idealized versions of alien creeds and distantcultures by Enlightenment figures such as Rousseau (1712–1778),Voltaire (1694–1778), Diderot (1713–1784), Montesquieu(1689–1755) and Condorcet (1743–1794), who in turn, wereinstrumental in establishing an intellectual climate hospitable tocultural relativism. These authors were also the first to explore theidea of viewing one’s culture from an outsider’s point ofview and using this external perspective as a vehicle to criticizelocal customs and norms. To take just one example, Diderot, in his“Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville”, tells us thatthe Tahitian is mild, innocent, and happy while civilized people arecorrupt, vile, and wretched; the natives live according to customs andrules that vary greatly from the Western ones. They do not possessprivate property or operate their affairs based on egalitarianprinciples, and they exercise sexual freedom not accepted in“civilized societies”. Diderot accordingly opposes theEuropean mission of civilizing the natives, and despite his belief ina common human nature, he advocates the relativistic sounding maximto

be monks in France and savages in Tahiti. Put on the costume of thecountry you visit, but keep the suit of clothes you will need to gohome in. (Diderot 1956 [1772]: 228 in Baghramian 2010: 37)

Discussions of relativism in the 19^th century had twosources (see Gardiner 1981). On the one hand, figures from theso-called Counter-Enlightenment, a philosophical movement which arosein the late 18^th century and the early 19^thcentury in opposition to the Enlightenment, Johann Georg Hamann(1730–1788), Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), Wilhelmvon Humboldt (1767–1835) emphasized the diversity of languagesand customs and their role in shaping human thought. Hamann’sviews on language, for instance, foreshadow contemporary conceptualand epistemic relativism. He maintained that language is the“instrument and criterion of reason” as well as the sourceof all the confusions and fallacies of reason. Furthermore, the rulesof rationality are embedded within language, which in turn, isgoverned by local norms of custom and use (Hamann 1967 [1759]).Relativism ensues because languages and their rules of rationalityvary a great deal. Herder, on the other hand, not only railed againstthe rational, universalizing and science-oriented ethos of theEnlightenment but, much like later relativists, also argued thatdifferent nations and epochs have their distinct preferences inethical and aesthetics matters as well as their varied conceptions oftruth and we are not in a position to adjudicate between them (Herder1774 [2002: 272–358]).

The Counter Enlightenment had a significant influence on Hegel,Nietzsche, and Dilthey, who in turn have shaped relativistic thinkingin certain strands of continental philosophy, postmodernism andcultural studies. Hamann’s rejection of objectivism was centralto Nietzsche’s even more profound recoil from objectivity. Andindeed, Nietzsche is possibly the single most influential voice inshaping relativistic sensibilities in 20^th centurycontinental philosophy. His declaration that all human conceptions anddescriptions, including those advanced by scientists, are

only an interpretation and arrangement of the world (according to ourown requirements, if I may say so!)—and not an explanation ofthe world. (Nietzsche 1886a [1996]: §14)

and that “there is only a perspective seeing, only a perspectiveknowing” (Nietzsche 1886b [1968]: §540), irrespective ofhow Nietzsche himself intended them, have been taken to express a corecontention of relativism that no single account of truth or realitycan occupy a privileged position, for such accounts are only one ofmany perspectives that prevail at a given time in history. We cannotappeal to any facts or standards of evaluation independently of theirrelation to the perspectives available to us; we can do little morethan to insist on the legitimacy of our own perspective and try toimpose it on other people through our “will to power”.

A second source was the German post-Kantian and British Idealistdiscussions of the “relativity of knowledge” taking placein the context of the distinction between being-for-other(für anderes sein) and being-for-itself(fürsichsein)—a distinction influenced by theKantian idea that all knowledge is ultimately relational becauseknowledge of the Real or “the thing in itself” isimpossible. John Stuart Mill, for instance ascribes to the KantianWilliam Hamilton the “doctrine of relativity of our humanknowledge” because Hamilton, according to Mill, believed thatthere could be no unconditional or absolute knowledge for allknowledge is dependent on the knowing mind (Mill 1884: 8).

The end of the 19^th century witnessed the emergence of yetanother strand of relativism motivated by empirical-psychological andphysiological interpretations of Kantian categories. The view, knownasspecies relativism, and defended by neo-Kantianpsychologists such as Theodore Lipps (1851–1914), holds that therules of logic are products of the human mind and psychology andtherefore may be unique to the human species; different species couldhave and use different logical principles. The view was vehemently,but quite effectively, attacked by Frege and Husserl as part of theirarguments against what they called “psychologism” and“speciesism” (Kusch 1995: 47). Logic in this approach isidentified with the actual thinking processes of individuals orcommunities and its authority is seen to be local, or relative to thepractices of particular epistemic groupings. But Frege and Husserlargued that with such relativization we would lose the ability todistinguish between reasoning correctly and merely seeming to doso.

Finally, the popularity of the very idea of relativism in the20^th century owes something to Einstein’s SpecialTheory of Relativity (1905) which was to be used both as model and aswell as a vindication for various relativistic claims. Gilbert Harmanis among the philosophers to use Einsteinian relativity as a model forphilosophical versions of relativism. He says:

According to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity even anobject’s mass is relative to a choice of spatio-temporalframework. An object can have one mass in relation to one suchframework and a different mass in relation to another. …. I amgoing to argue for a similar claim about moral right and wrong.… I am going to argue that moral right and wrong …. arealways relative to a choice of moral framework. (Harman 1996: 3)

The Sapir-Whorf theory of linguistic relativity (see§4.1) is also thought to have been inspired by the Relativity Theory. It ishowever worth noting that Einstein did not think that the Theory ofRelativity supported relativism in ethics or epistemology because,although in his model simultaneity and sameness of place are relativeto reference frames, the physical laws expressing such relativity areconstant and universal and hence in no sense relative.

The different strands of the intellectual genealogy of relativism haveshaped a variety of relativistic doctrines.

4. Varieties of Relativism

Relativism is discussed under a variety of headings some of which havebeen more prominent in recent philosophical and cultural debates.

4.1 Cultural relativism

Public debates about relativism often revolve around the frequentlycited but unclear notion ofcultural relativism. The ideathat norms and values are born out of conventions can be traced backto the Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484–425 BC), but it is onlyin the 20^th century, and particularly with the advent ofsocial anthropology, that cultural relativism has gained widecurrency. Franz Boas, responsible for the founding of socialanthropology in the U.S., claimed that

The data of ethnology prove that not only our knowledge but also ouremotions are the result of the form of our social life and of thehistory of the people to whom we belong. (Boas 1940: 636)

Boas’s views became the orthodoxy of anthropology through M. J.Herskovits’ “principle of cultural relativism”stating: “Judgments are based on experience, and experience isinterpreted by each individual in terms of his ownenculturation” (Herskovits 1955:15).

Since those early days, social anthropologists have come to developmore nuanced approaches to cultural relativism (see for instanceGeertz 1993); however, its core tenet, a claim to the equal standingof all cultural perspectives and values which co-vary with theircultural and social background, has remained constant.

Cultural relativists justify their position by recourse to acombination of empirical, conceptual and normative considerations:

(a)

The empirical observation that there is a significant degree ofdiversity in norms, values and beliefs across cultures and historicperiods, known asdescriptive relativism (see§2.1).

(b)

An inductive argument to the effect that failures in previousattempts to resolve disagreements arising from (a) show that there areno universal criteria for adjudicating between differingworld-views.

(c)

The methodological assumption that human behavior and thoughtcarry the imprint of their cultural and social context such thatbiology by itself is not sufficient for explaining many of their mostimportant features, especially those with respect to which culturesdiffer.

(d)

The normative principle of a need for tolerance and acceptancetowards other points of view (see§2.6), which leads to so-called “normative or prescriptive culturalrelativism”, or the positions that cultural relativism is amoralrequirement (see also normative moral relativism in§4.5).

Claims (a)–(d) are open to a variety of objections. Someanthropologists and biologists have argued against the empiricalassumption of the variability of cultures and have disputed itsextent. Kinship, death and its attendant rituals of mourning, birth,the experience of empathy, expressions of sympathy and fear, and thebiological needs that give rise to these, are some of the constantelements of human experience that belie the seeming diversity reportedby ethnographers (Brown 2004). (c) has also been challenged bynaturalistically inclined social scientists who believe that anevolutionary or a biologically informed approach can provide acontext-independent, universally applicable theoretical framework forexplaining what is common to all cultures, despite their superficialdifferences. Moreover, Moody-Adams (1997), among others, has arguedthat cultures are not integrated wholes that could determineuni-directionally the beliefs and experiences of their members; theyare porous, riddled with inconsistencies and amenable to change.Finally, (d) is under pressure from the very relativism it advocates.Other critics, Pope Benedict XVI for instance, in his very firsthomily delivered upon election (18 April 2005), reject and condemnprescriptive cultural relativism as a harbinger of nihilism and an“anything goes” extreme permissiveness.

An influential form of descriptive cultural relativism owes itsgenesis to linguistics. Benjamin Whorf, inspired by his teacher EdwardSapir, who in turn was supervised by the social anthropologist FranzBoas, used ethnographic evidence from American Indian languages, suchas Hopi, to argue that languages mold our views of the world anddifferent languages do so differently, because “we dissectnature along lines laid down by our native languages” (Whorf1956: 213). In the case of the Hopi, the claim was that their languageimposes a conception of time very different from that of the speakersof the Indo-European languages. The so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis,and the position known as “linguistic relativity”, becamepopular in both psychology and social anthropology in the mid20^th century. However, the empirical work by thepsychologists Berlin and Key (1969) and later by Eleanor Rosch (1974)pointed to the universality of color terms. The linguistic theories ofNoam Chomsky regarding the universality of grammar were also widelytaken to have discredited linguistic relativity. Moreover, Malotki(1983) had argued that, contrary to Whorf’s claim, the Hopilanguage does indeed have tense, as well as units of time, such asdays, weeks, months and seasons, and terminology for yesterday andtomorrow. Things have changed recently and there has been a slightswing of the pendulum back in favor of linguistic relativity on thepart of so called “neo-Whorfians”. Stephen Levinson, forinstance, drawing on experimental evidence, has argued that the frameof reference that underlies any given language shapes our spatialexperiences and perceptual modalities (see Gumperz & Levinson1996). Similar claims have been made about emotions, objectrepresentation, and memory. But the claims of linguistic relativity inall these cases are much more modest than Whorf’s originalthesis.

Historical relativism, or historicism, is the diachronic version ofcultural relativism. As Clifford Geertz points out, cultural andhistorical relativism are in effect the same doctrine with a coreclaim that “we cannot apprehend another people’s oranother period’s imagination neatly, as though it were ourown” (1993: 44). Historicism originated in reaction to theuniversalist tendencies of the Enlightenment but proved mostinfluential in the social sciences, particularly in the hands of19^th century theorists such as Karl Marx and Max Weber.Oswald Spengler, the then-influential turn-of-the-century Germanhistorian and philosopher, also declared that: “There are noeternal truths. Every philosophy is an expression of its time”(Spengler 1918: 58). Karl Mannheim, to whom we owe the sub-disciplineof sociology of knowledge, pronounced that historicism is asignificant intellectual force that epitomizes our worldview(Weltanschauung).

The historicist principle not only organizes, like an invisible hand,the work of the cultural sciences (Geisteswissenschaften),but also permeates everyday thinking. (Mannheim 1952 [1924]:84)

As we will see (§4.4.3), in more recent times historicist interpretations of science, chieflythose espoused by Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, have played a majorrole in popularizing relativistic interpretations of scientificknowledge.

4.2 Conceptual relativism

Conceptual relativism is a narrowly delineated form ofrelativism where ontology, or what exists, rather than ethical andepistemic norms, is relativized to conceptual schemes, scientificparadigms, or categorical frameworks. In this sense, conceptualrelativism is often characterized as a metaphysical doctrine ratherthan as variant of epistemic or cultural relativism. The underlyingrationale for this form of relativism is the anti-realist thesis thatthe world does not present itself to us ready-made or ready-carved;rather we supply different, and at times incompatible, ways ofcategorizing and conceptualizing it. Reflection on the connectionsbetween mind and the world, rather than empirical observations ofhistoric and cultural diversity, is the primary engine driving variousforms of conceptual relativism, but data from anthropology andlinguistics are also used in its support. The thought, at least sinceKant, is that the human mind is not a passive faculty merelyrepresenting an independent reality; rather, it has an active role inshaping, if not constructing, the “real”. The conceptualrelativist adds, as Kant did not, that human beings may construct thereal in different ways thanks to differences in language orculture.

In the 20^th century, a variety of positions sympathetic toconceptual relativism were developed. Quine’s ontologicalrelativity, Nelson Goodman’s “irrealism” with itsclaim of the plurality of “world-versions” and HilaryPutnam’s conceptual relativity are prominent examples. Whatthese authors have in common is an insistence that there could be morethan one “right” way of describing what there is, thatincompatible “manuals of translation” and“world-versions” can be equally correct or acceptable.

Quine’s thesis of ontological relativity, probably the mostinfluential of 20^th century approaches to conceptualrelativity, is expressed both in an epistemic as well as in a strongermetaphysical form. Quine supports an epistemic thesis when he claimsthat incompatible scientific theories can account equally adequatelyfor the data available to us (hisunderdetermination thesis)and that “there are various defensible ways of conceiving theworld”, (Quine 1992: 102). But his thesis of the indeterminacyof translation makes the stronger claim that different incompatiblemanuals of translation, or conceptual schemes, can account for one andthe same verbal behavior and the indeterminacy resides at the level offacts rather than our knowledge, a position that leads to unavoidableontological relativity.

Nelson Goodman’s irrealism is an even more radical claim to theeffect that the existence of many adequate, and indeed correct, butirreconcilable descriptions and representations of the world showsthat there is no such thing asone unique actual world;rather there are many worlds, one for each correct description (e.g.,Goodman 1975;cf. Sider 2009). Hilary Putnam disagrees withGoodman’s formulation of relativity with its radical talk of“world-making” but relies on arguments from conceptualplurality to reject metaphysical realism, the view that there is onesingle correct account of what the world is like (cf., Arageorgis2017). According to Putnam, our most basic metaphysical categories,e.g., objecthood and existence, could be defined variously dependingon what conceptual scheme we use. What counts as an object itself, heargues, is determined by and hence is relative to the ontologicalframework we opt for.

Thomas Kuhn’s highly influential discussion of the governingrole of paradigms in science (see§4.4.3) has also been interpreted as a form of conceptual relativism byfriends (Kusch 2002) and critics (Davidson 1974) of relativismalike.

The key difficulty facing conceptual relativism is that of formulatingthe position in a coherent but non-trivial manner. Trivial versionsallow that the world can be described in different ways, but make noclaims to the incompatibility of these descriptions. The charge ofincoherence arises from the claim that there could be genuinelyconflicting and equally true accounts or descriptions of one and thesame phenomenon. To use an example that is the corner-stone of HilaryPutnam’s conceptual relativity, Putnam claims that the simplequestion how many objects there are (say on a given table) could beanswered variously depending on whether we use “a mereologicalor a Carnapian, common-sense, method of individuating objects”.In circumstances where a Carnapian counts three objectsA,B andC, a mereologist will count seven:A,B,C, plus the mereological sum objectsA+B,A+C,B+C,A+B+C. As Putnam puts it:

The suggestion … is that what is (by commonsense standards) thesame situation can be described in many different ways, depending onhow we use the words. The situation does not itself legislate howwords like “object”, “entity”, and“exist” must be used. What is wrong with the notion ofobjects existing “independently” of conceptual schemes isthat there are no standards for the use of even the logical notionsapart from conceptual choices. (Putnam 1988: 114)

The puzzle is to explain how both the Carnapian and mereologicalanswers to the one and same question could be correct and yet mutuallyincompatible, for unless we abandon the most fundamental law of logic,the law of non-contradiction, we cannot deem one and the sameproposition true and not true. Relativists respond thatbothanswers are correct, eachrelative to the conceptual scheme itinvokes. So, once we accept the insight that there is noArchimedean vantage point for choosing among conflicting frameworks,we no longer face a genuine contradiction. The response invokes, oftenimplicitly, a relativized conception of truth, which as we shall seebelow, faces its own difficulties.

4.3 Relativism about truth or alethic relativism

Relativism about truth, oralethic relativism, at itssimplest, is the claim that what is true for one individual or socialgroup may not be true for another, and there is no context-independentvantage point to adjudicate the matter. What is true or false isalways relative to a conceptual, cultural, or linguisticframework.

Alethic relativism is the most central of all relativistic positionssince other subdivisions of the philosophical theses ofrelativism—with the possible exception of some narrowly definedversions of conceptual relativism such as Nelson Goodman’sirrealism (see§4.2)—are in principle, reducible to it (Baghramian 2004: 92). For instance,relativism about logic may be restated as a view according to whichthe standing of logical truths (including truths about consequencerelations) is relative to cultures or cognitive schemes. Ethicalrelativism can be seen as the claim that the truth of ethicaljudgments, if such truths exist, is relative to context or culture. Iftruth is to be seen as equally applicable to all areas of discourseand also unitary, rather than domain specific or plural, then alethicrelativism is not only a strong form of global relativism but it alsoentails the denial of the possibility of more local forms ofrelativism because all localized relativistic claims are also attemptsat relativizing truth (seemingly in a particular domain ofdiscourse).

The central claim of alethic relativism is that “is true”,despite appearances to the contrary, is (at least, in some relevantdomains of discourse) not a one-place but a two-place predicate suchthat “P is true” should correctly be understoodas (modulo differences in particular ways of developing thisidea) shorthand for “P is true forX”,whereX is a culture, conceptual scheme, belief framework,etc. And within the broad camp of alethic relativists, the matter ofhow it is that which we should opt for“P-is-true-for-X”, rather than“P is true”, simpliciter, is developed indifferent ways (e.g., see Meiland 1977; MacFarlane 2014: ch. 5; Egan2007; Ferrari & Moruzzi 2018; Merlo & Pravato 2020). Oneshared commitment of relativizing the truth predicate is that claimssuch as “misfortune is caused by witchcraft” could be trueaccording to the Azande cultural framework and false in the Westernscientific framework. One major difficulty facing alethic relativistsis to explain what “true for” actually means, and how“true for” should be understood as related to the morefamiliar absolutist truth predicate. For instance, should relativetruth be understood as a modification on an already familiar strategyfor thinking about truth (e.g., the correspondence, pragmatic orepistemic model) or in some different way, entirely? (MacFarlane 2014:ch. 2). Much of the work of New Relativists such as John MacFarlane(see§5) can be see as an attempt to clarify this thorny issue.

4.3.1 Alethic Relativism and the charge of self-refutation.

The strongest and most persistent charge leveled against all types ofrelativism, but (global) alethic relativism in particular, is theaccusation of self-refutation. Here is for instance Harvey Siegel:

This incoherence charge is by far the most difficult problem facingthe relativist (cf., though see Kölbel 2022). It is worth notingthat attempts to overcome the problem by appealing to the notion ofrelative truth appear not to succeed. Many versions ofrelativism rely on such a notion, but it is very difficult to makesense of it. An assertion that a proposition is “true forme” (or “true for members of my culture”) is morereadily understood as a claim concerning what I (or members of myculture, scheme, etc.)believe than it is as a claimascribing to that proposition some special sort of truth. Constructinga conception of relative truth such that “p isrelatively true” (or “p is true forS”, or “p is true for members of cultureC”) amounts to something stronger than“S believes thatp” (or “membersof cultureC believe thatp”), but weaker than“p is true (simpliciter)”, has proved tobe quite difficult, and is arguably beyond the conceptual resourcesavailable to the relativist. (Siegel 2011: 203)

The original argument goes back to Plato’s criticism ofProtagoras in theTheaetetus where he argues:

Most people believe that Protagoras’s doctrine is false.

Protagoras, on the other hand, believes his doctrine to be true.

By his own doctrine, Protagoras must believe that his opponents’view is true.

Therefore, Protagoras must believe that his own doctrine is false (seeTheaetetus: 171a–c)

Plato’s argument, as it stands, appears to be damaging only ifwe assume that Protagoras, at least implicitly, is committed to theuniversal or objective truth of relativism. On this view, Plato begsthe question on behalf of an absolutist conception of truth (Burnyeat1976a: 44). Protagoras, the relativists counter, could indeed acceptthat his own doctrine isfalse for those who acceptabsolutism but continue believing that his doctrine istruefor him. He could also try to persuade others to become the sortof thinker for whom relativism is true without being entangled inself-contradiction. Such an effort at persuasions, however, couldinvolve Protagoras in a performative contradiction as the relativistcannot assume that her arguments are good for persuading others.Ordinarily, the very act of defending a philosophical position commitsus to the dialectical move of attempting to convince our interlocutorsof the superiorvalue of what we are arguing for. Therelativist cannot make such a commitment and therefore his attempts topersuade others to accept his position may be pragmaticallyself-refuting. The relativist can avoid the standard charge ofself-refutation by accepting that relativism cannot be proven true inany non-relative sense—viz., that relativism itself asa philosophical position is at best true only relative to a culturalor historical context and therefore could be false in other frameworksor cultures. But such an admission will undermine therelativist’s attempt to convince others of her position, for thevery act of argumentation, as it is commonly understood, is an attemptto convince those who disagree with us of the falsehood of theirposition. In other words, if Protagoras really believes in relativismwhy would he bother to argue for it?

It may be argued that Protagoras could have opted for a more sensibleform of alethic relativism where a person’s beliefs are notautomatically true relative to the framework she accepts.Rather a beliefp is true according toX’sframework iff (roughly)Xwould believe thatp if she were to reason cogently by her own standards on thebasis of full relevant information. This form of alethic relativismallows for argument and persuasion among people who initiallydisagree, for despite their disagreement they may share or come toshare a framework. Protagoras may, on this reinterpretation, be tryingto persuade his interlocutor that if she were to reason cogently byher own standards from their shared framework, she would acceptrelativism. However, it is not clear how the relativist could share aframework with the absolutist on the nature of truth or whatargumentative strategies he can use to convert the absolutist withoutpresupposing a shared (relativist or absolutist) conceptions of truth.In particular, a consistent relativist will have only a relativizedcriteria of what counts as “true” information, whichpresumably will not be shared by the absolutist.

A second strand of the self-refutation argument focuses on the natureand role of truth. J.L. Mackie, for instance, has argued that alethicabsolutism is a requisite of a coherent notion of truth and that aclaim to the effect that “There are no absolute truths” isabsolutely self-refuting (Mackie 1964: 200). But the relativistsreject the quick move that presupposes the very conception of truththey are at pains to undermine and have offered sophisticatedapproaches of defense. A good example of such a defense isHales’ (1997)—who uses a “u” operator torepresent “It is true in some perspectives that” and a“n” operator to represent “It is true in allperspectives that”—in order to establish that there couldindeed be a consistent relativist logic which avoids the charge ofself-refutation. Key to this approach, according to Hales, is that weabandon a conception of global relativism on which the lose thesis“everything is relative” is embraced—a thesis Halesconcedes to be inconsistent—for the thesis “everythingthat is true is relatively true”, which he maintains is not(cf. Shogenji 1997 for a criticism of Hales on thispoint).

It has also been claimed that alethic relativism gives rise to whatJ.L. Mackie calls “operational” (Mackie 1964: 202) and MaxKölbel “conversational” self-refutation (Kölbel2011) by flouting one or more crucial norms of discourse and therebyundermines the very possibility of coherent discourse. One version ofthe argument, advanced most notably by Gareth Evans (1985:346–63), begins with the premise that a publicly shareddistinction between correct and incorrect, and hence true and false,assertion is a necessary condition for coherent assertoric discourse.As Evans puts it, a theory that

permits a subject to deduce merely that a particular utterance is nowcorrect but later will be incorrect … cannot assist the subjectin deciding what to say, nor in interpreting the remarks of others.What should we aim at, or take others to be aiming at?. (1985:349)

And if truth is relative, then there is no single shared definiteaim for any given assertion (see MacFarlane 2014: ch. 12 fora discussion). The relativists however, could respond that truth isrelative to a group (conceptual scheme, framework) and they takespeakers to be aiming a truth relative to the scheme that they andtheir interlocutors are presumed to share. The difficulty with thisapproach is that it seems to make communication across frameworksimpossible.

Such a response, however, will be answerable to the charge ofincoherence raised by Donald Davidson against both alethic andconceptual relativism. According to Davidson, the principle ofcharity—the assumption that other speakers by and large speaktruly (by our lights)—is a pre-requisite of all interpretation.He takes this to imply that there could not be languages or conceptualschemes that we cannot in principle understand and interpret, in otherwords, if a system of signsL is not recognizable as alanguage by us thenL is not a language. Languages are eitherinter-translatable and hence not radically different from ours, orincommensurable and beyond our ability to recognize them as languages(Davidson 1974). The relativist, in effect, places other speakers andtheir languages beyond our recognitional reach and thereby underminesthe initial claim that they could be radically different orincommensurable.

New Relativism, as we shall see, offers a novel take on the oldquestion of alethic relativism and gives weight to AlasdairMacIntyre’s observation that relativism may have been refuted anumber of times too often, whereas genuinely refutable doctrines onlyneed to be refuted once (MacIntyre 1985: 5).

4.4 Epistemic relativism

Claims to knowledge and justification have proven receptive torelativistic interpretations. Epistemic relativism is the thesis thatcognitive norms that determine what counts as knowledge, or whether abelief is rational, justifiable, etc. could vary with and aredependent on local conceptual or cultural frameworks and lack theuniversality they aspire or pretend to. The three key assumptionsunderlying epistemic relativism are:

(a)

Epistemic justification is framework relative. It makes no senseto ask whether a belief is justifiedsimpliciter; we can onlyask questions about justification relative to an epistemic system,which casts doubts on the very possibility of objectivity.

(b)

There are many genuinely alternative, even incompatible, epistemicsystems.

(c)

We cannot demonstrate in a non-circular way that our epistemicsystem is superior to any other. (see Williams 2007: 94 for oneversion of this approach to epistemic relativism;cf. Carter2015)

The epistemic relativist, as Paul Boghossian in developing histrenchant criticisms of relativism points out, is committed to a“doctrine of equal validity” (though cf.,Pérez-Navarro 2022), the view that “there are manyradically different, incompatible, yet, ‘equally valid’ways of knowing the world, with science being just one of them”(Boghossian 2006a: 2). The relativist’s key claim is that eitherwe can chauvinistically maintain that our epistemic system is superiorto all or accept the equal legitimacy of varying epistemicsystems.

One crucial question facing epistemic relativism is how to identifyand individuate alternative epistemic systems. The intuitive idea isthat varying and possibly incompatible cognitive principles,ground-level beliefs and presuppositions, or what Wittgenstein calls“hinge” and “bedrock” propositions(Wittgenstein 1969: §§341–343) separate non-convergentepistemic schemes. A simple and quite commonly used example is thecontrast between scientific and religious belief systems. Boghossian,for instance, uses the debate between Galileo and Cardinal Bellarmineas a case study of an encounter between antagonists operating withinputatively different epistemic frameworks, who use differentframeworks, or as Rorty (1979) put it “grids”, fordetermining what would count as appropriate evidence on planetarymovements. The relativist claims that there is no fact of the matterabout whether the Copernican theory or the geocentric view isjustified by the evidence, “for there are no absolute factsabout what justifies what” (Boghossian 2006a: 62) while theanti-relativist attempts to show the unintelligibility or theimplausibility of such a claim.

The question of whether disagreements between interlocutors whoembrace different frameworks are genuinely intractable or“epistemically incommensurable” has been a significantpoint of debate in recent hinge epistemology (Pritchard 2011, 2021;Ranalli 2020; Piedrahita 2021; Carter 2017; Coliva 2019). Hingeepistemologists, following Wittgenstein, acknowledge not only thepresence of arational hinges within epistemic frameworks but alsoendorse a general view about rational support relations: we canjustify the less certain only by appealing to the more certain.If—and this remains a point of dispute among hingeepistemologists—there are genuinely alternative sets of hingepropositions (propositions of which one is most certain), then theWittgensteinian idea that we can justify the less certain only by themore certain may problematize the very possibility of avoidingepistemic incommensurability when interlocutors begin withfundamentally different frameworks. After all, under theseassumptions, it becomes difficult to see how there could be any, asBoghossian notes the relativist denies, “absolute facts aboutwhat justifies what.” For optimism about the hingeepistemologist’s ability to avoid a commitment to epistemicincommensurability, see Pritchard (2015, 2021); for the view thatwhether hinge disagreements are epistemically incommensurable dependsimportantly on the nature of hinge propositions, see Ranalli(2020).

Boghossian has been criticized however for his characterization ofepistemic relativism. One notable such criticism has been advanced byCrispin Wright (2008), who takes issue with Boghossian’sattributing to the epistemic relativist a version of(a) above, what Boghossian callsepistemic relationism, or the thesisthat any claim of the form “EvidenceE justifies beliefB”, if it is to have any prospect of being true, mustbe construed as expressing the claimAccording to the epistemicsystem C, that I, S accept, informationE justifies beliefB (Boghossian 2006a:73). Having characterized therelativist’s position in this fashion, Boghossiansuggests—after considering various ways of articulating what therelativist might say about theuntruth of claims of the form“EvidenceE justifies beliefB”—that the relativist is left, ultimately, withno coherent way to account for how she should count as accepting oradhering to a given epistemic system. And on this basis, Boghossianconcludes that there is no coherent way to formulate the positionbecause the relativist in formulating his position and setting up theopposition between two or more alternative non-convergent epistemicsystems cannot but assume the universality of at least some epistemicprinciples, including deduction, induction, warrant through empiricalevidence, etc. (see Boghossian 2006a).

As Wright sees it, however, Boghossian’s attributing therelationist clause to the epistemic relativist is to simply

fail to take seriously the thesis that claims such as [EvidenceE justifies beliefB] can indeed by true or false,albeit only relatively so. (Wright 2008: 383, ouritalics)

Moreover, Wright argues, the epistemic relationist clause Boghossianincludes in the kind of epistemic relativism he challenges betrays afailure to distinguish between (i) making a judgment in the light ofcertain standards and (ii) judging that those standards mandate thatjudgment. (See also MacFarlane (2008b and Carter & McKennaforthcoming for different critiques of Boghossian’s argumentagainst the epistemic relativist.)

Conceptions of rationality, and its key components of logic andjustification, are some of the principles that are often used todifferentiate between epistemic systems. Below we look at attempts atrelativizing each.

4.4.1 Relativism about Rationality

Earlier defenses of epistemic relativism centered on the idea ofalternative rationalities and were often developed as a reaction tothe charge of irrationality leveled at non-Western tribal people.Rationality traditionally is seen as a cognitive virtue as well as ahallmark of the scientific method. The complex notion of rationalityis intimately tied to requirements of consistency, justification,warrant and evidence for beliefs. Relativists about rationality castdoubt on the universal applicability of one or more of these featuresof rational thought, and deem them merely local epistemic values.Peter Winch’s treatment of E.E. Evans-Pritchard’s accountof the Azande tribe’s beliefs in witchcraft and magic is now aclassic of the “rationality wars” of the 1960s and 70s.Winch had argued that since standards of rationality in differentsocieties do not always coincide, we should use only contextually andinternally given criteria of rationality in our assessment of thesystems of belief of other cultures and societies. Under the influenceof the later Wittgenstein, he maintained that it does not make senseto speak of a universal standard of rationality because what isrational is decided by a backdrop of norms governing a given languageand form of life. As outside observers, we are not in a position toimpute irrationality or illogicality to the Azande or any other groupwhose practices and language-games may differ from ours. Critics ofWinch, Steven Lukes, for instance, using considerations reminiscent ofDavidson’s principle of charity, have argued that we will not bein a position to understand a language or culture with standards ofrationality radically different from ours, and that we must have atleast some core principles, or what Martin Hollis had called a“bridgehead” with elements such as consistency and thegoal of truth, in common with the Azande in order to understand them(Hollis 1968; Lukes 1970). They, thereby, conclude that an all-out orstrong relativism about rationality is not tenable. The weaker claimis that some elements of rationality, for instance what counts as goodevidence or a better style of reasoning, could vary with historicconditions and traditions of enquiry and therefore a degree ofrelativization of such norms, without succumbing to irrationalism, isacceptable (see Hacking 1982 and MacIntyre 1988).

Being rational also means having warrant, in the form of good reasonsand justification for one’s beliefs. Epistemic relativistsmaintain that the legitimacy of a justificatory system and thepresumed strength of epistemic warrants are decided locally. RichardRorty has made the influential claim that

there is nothing to be said about either truth or rationality apartfrom descriptions of the familiar procedures of justification which agiven society—ours—uses in one or another area ofinquiry. (Rorty 1991: 23)

For Rorty, warrant is a “sociological matter, to be ascertainedby observing the reception of [a speaker’s] statement by herpeers” (1993: 449). Rorty also claims that knowledge and truthare compliments “paid to beliefs which we think so welljustified that, for the moment, further justification is notneeded” (Rorty 1991: 24) where the “we” is ahistorically conditioned community of enquirers. Rorty rejects thelabel “relativist” because he insists that, unlike therelativists, he does not subscribe to the view that all beliefs areequally true or good. He calls his position“ethnocentrism”, because the only form of warrantavailable to any of us is the one provided through solidarity with ourpeers. His rejection of the label “relativist” has hadlittle effect on critics such as Hilary Putnam (1999) or PaulBoghossian (2006a) who do not see the distinction Rorty wishes to drawbetween his brand of ethnocentrism and relativism

4.4.2 Relativism about Logic

Debates about the scope and authority of logic are also focal todiscussions of rationality. The argument for relativism about logic isusually traced to the French anthropologist Lucien Lévy-Bruhl(1857–1939) who claimed that tribal or “primitive”cultures did not subscribe to universal laws of logic such as theprinciples of non-contradiction and identity and were in a pre-logicalstage of thinking (Lévy-Bruhl 1922/1923). In a posthumouspublication, Lévy-Bruhl renounced his earlier views, findingthem “simplistic and rather crude” (Lévy-Bruhl1949/1975: 48) but he remains the standard bearer for relativism aboutlogic.

Peter Winch’s interpretation of the Azande material became theimpetus for a new wave of arguments for relativism about logic. BarryBarnes and David Bloor, for instance, have argued that differentsocieties may have incompatible but internally coherent systems oflogic because validity and rules of inference are defined by, andhence are relative to, the practices of a given community, rather thana priori universal restrictions on all thought. According toBloor,

The Azande have the same psychology as us but radically differentinstitutions. If we relate logic to the psychology of reasoning weshall be inclined to say that they have the same logic; if we relatelogic more closely to the institutional framework of thought then weshall incline to the view that the two cultures have different logics.(Bloor 1976: 129–130)

Even the status of “contradictions” is at times seen asculturally relative and the Azande’s application of witchcraftin determining guilt is cited as an example. The Azande, according toEvans-Prichard, believe that it is possible to identify a witch byexamining the contents of his intestine (through the use of a poisonoracle). They also believe that Witchhood is inherited patrilineally.Since the Azande clan members are related to each other through themale line, it follows that if one person is shown to be a witch, thenall the members of his clan must also be witches. Evans-Pritchardtells us that although the Azande see the sense of this argument theydo not accept the conclusion; they seem to side-step the contradictionin their belief-system. Relativistically inclined commentators haveargued that the Azande both do and do not contradict themselvesdepending on, or relative to, the culture that is being taken as thevantage point (Bloor 1976: 124 and Jennings 1989: 281). See Seidel(2014) for a sustained critique.

More recently, Peng and Nisbett, using experimental data, have arguedthat Chinese and American students have different attitudes towardsthe Law of Non-Contradiction. The Chinese, they claim, are morewilling to accept that conflicting views may be compatible andtherefore are less disposed to recognize or condemn contradictions(Peng & Nisbett 1999). In hisThe Geography of Thought(2003), Nisbett has generalized his results to claim that Asian andEuropean structures of thinking, including perception andconceptualization, differ significantly.

Nisbett’s data, as well as the claims by Barnes and Bloor, arecontributions to a long-standing debate about the status of logic.Their approach attempts to naturalize logic by tying it to actualpractices of the human subjects. The relativistically inclined,however, argue that to think of logic as singular, a priori, anduniversal speaks of a philosophical prejudice and does not sit wellwith a naturalistic and scientific attitude. As to the claim by Quineand Davidson, that an allegedly illogical culture is in fact amisinterpreted or badly interpreted culture—that if the speakersof a language seem to accept sentence of the form “Pand not-P”, this is conclusive evidence that“and” and “not” in their language do not meanwhat these words mean in English (Quine 1960)—the relativistsand their sympathisers point out that reasoning in deviant ways isquite common and is not an impediment to understanding or translatingothers (e.g., Stich 2012). They further argue that such diversity isbetter explained by the relativist’s claim that the correctnessof the principles of reasoning is relative to their culturalbackground rather than by the absolutist approach that attributeswholesale error to alternative epistemic systems or to the members ofother cultures.

A different line of support for relativism about logic starts withpluralism about logic, the view that there can be a multitude ofcorrect but not fully compatible conceptions of logic where differingaccounts of logical consequence, logical connectives or even validityare on offer. Relativism ensues if we also assume that there is noneutral framework for adjudicating between the differing accounts.What counts as a correct account of logical consequence and validityor even the choice of logical vocabulary are relative to the system oflogic that embed and justify these accounts and choices. (SeeSteinberger 2019 for a useful survey.)

Stewart Shapiro (2014) is probably the most vocal defender of thisapproach. His argument for relativism about logic is similar todefences of relativism in other areas where intractable differences ina particular domain and an inability to reconcile them are used as themotivators for relativism. Shapiro advocates what, following CrispinWright, he calls “folk-relativism” and its slogan that“There is no such thing as simply being Φ” (Shapiro,2014: 7; Wright 2008a: 158) and applies it to validity and logicalconsequence. The claim is that there are different conceptions oflogical consequence. in classical and non-classical logic, whichalthough not compatible can still capture correct accounts of the ideaof logical consequence. Therefore, it does not make sense to thinkthat there is a uniquely correct conception of validity and logicalconsequence. Different conceptions can be legitimate in so far as eachis (internally) consistent and also non-trivial in the sense that itis the basis a workable mathematical systems, i.e., the means ofmaking sense of “the practice of pursuing and applyingmathematics” (Shapiro 2014: 81). Intuitionism and fuzzy logicare notable examples. Choices between different logical vocabulariesalso can lead to a relativized conception of logic in so far a thesevocabularies play a decisive role in generating different relations oflogical consequence.

For further discussion, see the entry onlogical pluralism.

4.4.3 Relativism about Science

Discussions of relativism about science gained currency with thepublication of Thomas Kuhn’sThe Structure of ScientificRevolutions (1962) and the emergence of a historicist approach toquestion of change and progress in science. Pronouncements such as

In so far as their only recourse to [the] world is through what theysee and do, we may want to say that after a revolution scientists areresponding to a different world (Kuhn 1970 [1962]: 111)

and

The very ease and rapidity with which astronomers saw new things whenlooking at old objects with old instruments may make us wish to saythat, after Copernicus, astronomers lived in a different world (Kuhn1970 [1962]: 117)

were taken to suggest that not only standards of epistemic appraisalbut even the data gathered by scientists were, to a significantextent, determined by governing paradigms and hence relative to them.Although Kuhn stepped back from such radical relativism, his viewsgave currency to relativistic interpretations of science (though seeSankey 2018).

Relativism about science is motivated by considerations arising fromthe methodology and history of science (Baghramian 2007). As we saw in§4.2, Quine has argued that

Physical theories can be at odds with each other and yet compatiblewith all possible data even in the broadest possible sense. In a word,they can be logically incompatible and empirically equivalent. (1970:179)

Relativists about science have argued that only with the addition ofauxiliary hypotheses could the scientist choose between varioustheories and that such auxiliary hypotheses are colored by sociallyand historically grounded norms as well as by personal and groupinterests. Paul Feyerabend’s “democraticrelativism”—the view that different societies may look atthe world in different ways and regard different things as acceptable(1987: 59) and that we need to give equal voice to these differingperspectives—is one instance of the use of theunderdetermination thesis in support of relativism. According toFeyerabend, underdetermination ultimately demonstrates that

for every statement, theory, point of view believed (to be true) withgood reason there exist arguments showing a conflicting alternative tobe at least as good, or even better. (1987: 76)

Larry Laudan usefully lists the ways underdetermination is used tomotivate relativism or its proximate doctrines. He says:

Lakatos and Feyerabend have taken the underdetermination of theoriesto justify the claim that the only difference between empiricallysuccessful and empirically unsuccessful theories lies in the talentsand resources of their respective advocates (i.e., with sufficientingenuity, more or less any theory can be made to lookmethodologically respectable). Hesse and Bloor have claimed thatunderdetermination shows the necessity for bringing noncognitive,social factors into play in explaining the theory choices ofscientists (on the grounds that methodological and evidentialconsiderations alone are demonstrably insufficient to account for suchchoices). H. M. Collins, and several of his fellow sociologists ofknowledge, have asserted that underdetermination lends credence to theview that the world does little if anything to shape or constrain ourbeliefs about it. (Laudan 1990: 321)

Laudan even connects Derrida’s deconstructionism and the viewthat texts do not lend themselves to determinate readings withunderdetermination (ibid.). He also believes that an appropriatelymodest understanding of what underdetermination entails will distanceit from relativism, but most relativistically inclined advocates ofunderdetermination are not willing to follow Laudan’s advice tocircumscribe its scope. The key issue is that both the relativists andthe anti-relativists could agree that the totality of evidenceavailable does not prove the truth of any given theory. But theanti-relativists responds to this fact of underdetermination bypointing out that the we have good reasons for embracing the besttheory available and moreover that there are indeed objective factsabout the world, even if we are not in possession of them. Therelativist, in contrast, argues that there are many, equallyacceptable principles for accepting theories, all on the basis ofevidence available, but such theories could result in very differentverdicts. They also argue that in the absence of any strong epistemicgrounds for accepting the existence of absolute facts in any givendomain, we have no grounds, other than some kind of metaphysicalfaith, for thinking that there are such facts.

Relativism about science is also influenced by the related doctrinethat all observations are theory-laden (for discussion see Kusch2021). Even anti-relativists such as Karl Popper admit that the ideathat observations are not in some way tinted by theoreticalassumptions is naïve. But some relativists about science offer aparticularly extreme form of the doctrine of the widely acceptedthesis of theory-ladenness. Feyerabend, for instance, goes so far asto argue that different systems of classification can result inperceptual objects that are not easily comparable.

Relativists about science also point to the prevalence of bothsynchronic and diachronic disagreement among scientists as ajustification of their view. Looking at the history of science, Kuhnand his followers argued that Aristotelian physics presupposes atotally different conception of the universe compared to Newtonianphysics; the same is true of Einsteinian physics compared to itspredecessors. Moreover, these differing conceptions may beincommensurable in the sense that they are not readily amenable tocomparison or inter-theoretical translation. There are also strong andunresolved disagreements between scientists working contemporaneously.The many different interpretations of quantum mechanics are a case inpoint.

Anti-relativist philosophers of science are often willing to concedeall three points above, but insist that they do not, singly orjointly, justify the claim that scientific knowledge, in anyphilosophically interesting sense, is relative to its context ofproduction. The success of science, both theoretical and applied,indicates that progress does take place. Fallibilism, the view thatall scientific claims are provisional and liable to fail, they argue,is sufficient for dealing with difficulties arising fromconsiderations of underdetermination and theory-ladenness ofobservations. Relativism, with its attendant denial that there couldbe objective and universal scientific truths or knowledge exacts toohigh a price for dealing with these allegedly troublesome features ofthe methodology and history of science.

4.4.4 Social Constructionism

Social constructionism is a particularly radical form of conceptualrelativism with implications for our understanding of the methodologyand subject matter of the sciences. According to socialconstructionism, nature as studied by scientists does not come carvedat its joints (to use Plato’s metaphor fromPhaedrus:265d–266a). Reality—with its objects, entities, propertiesand categories—is not simply “out there” to bediscovered only by empirical investigation or observation; rather, itis constructed through a variety of norm-governed socially sanctionedcognitive activities such as interpretation, description, manipulationof data, etc. Social constructionism has relativistic consequencesinsofar as it claims that different social forces lead to theconstruction of different “worlds” and that there is noneutral ground for adjudicating between them. The “ScienceStudies” approach of Bruno Latour is a prime example ofconstructionism with relativistic consequences. Latour and Woolgar(1986) have argued that so-called “scientific facts” andthe “truths” of science emerge out of social andconceptual practices and inevitably bear their imprints. This isbecause the very idea of a mind-independent reality open to scientificstudy, or as they call it “out-there-ness”, itself is theconsequence of scientific work rather than the cause. A crucialdifference between scientific realists and constructionists is thatwhereas the realists see nature and society as thecausesthat explain the outcomes of scientific enquiry, for theconstructionists the activity of

scientists and engineers and of all their human and non-human alliesis the cause, of which various states of nature and societies are theconsequence. (Callon & Latour 1992: 350–1)

Scientific theories are also products of socially constitutedpractices. They are

contextually specific constructions which bear the mark of thesituated contingency and interest structure of the process by whichthey are generated. (Knorr-Cetina 1981: 226; see also McKenna 2022 forthe view that knowledge, scientific or otherwise, is a socialphenomenon.)

So called “scientific facts” and “naturalkinds”, the primary subjects of scientific investigation are, atleast in part, the products of the contingent social and epistemicnorms that define the very subject matter of science. It may be arguedthat the view, if taken literally, entails a counter-intuitive form ofbackward causation to the effect that, for instance, the scientificfacts about dinosaur anatomy 50 million years ago were caused in the20^th century when a scientific consensus about dinosauranatomy was formed (see Boghossian 2006a). But constructionism, atleast in its most extreme form, accepts this consequence, insistingthat there are indeed no facts except for socially constructed ones,created and modified at particular times and places courtesy ofprevailing theoretical and conceptual frameworks.

4.5 Moral Relativism

Moral or ethical relativism is simultaneously the most influential andthe most reviled of all relativistic positions. Supporters see it as aharbinger of tolerance (see§2.6), open-mindedness and anti-authoritarianism. Detractors think itundermines the very possibility of ethics and signals either confusedthinking or moral turpitude.

Briefly stated, moral relativism is the view that moral judgments,beliefs about right and wrong, good and bad, not only vary greatlyacross time and contexts, but that their correctness is dependent onor relative to individual or cultural perspectives and frameworks.Moral subjectivism is the view that moral judgments are judgmentsabout contingent and variable features of our moralsensibilities. For the subjectivist, to say that abortion is wrong isto say something like, “I disapprove of abortion”, or“Around here, we disapprove of abortion”. Once the contentof the subjectivist’s claim is made explicit, the truth oracceptability of a subjectivist moral judgment is no longer a relativematter. Moral relativism proper, on the other hand, is the claim thatfacts about right and wrong vary with and are dependent on social andcultural background. Understood in this way, moral relativism could beseen as a sub-division of cultural relativism. Values may also berelativized to frameworks of assessment, independent of specificcultures or social settings.

Moral relativism, like most relativistic positions, comes in variousforms and strengths. It is customary to distinguish betweendescriptive or empirical, prescriptive or normative, and meta-ethicalversions of moral relativism. These views in turn are motivated by anumber of empirical (including psychological, see Park 2021) andphilosophical considerations similar to those introduced in defense ofcultural relativism. The purported fact of ethical diversity, theclaim that there are no universally agreed moral norms or values,conjoined with the intractability of the arguments about them, are thecore components of descriptive moral relativism. The anti-relativistscounter-argue that the observed diversity and lack of convergence inlocal norms can in fact be explained by some very general universalnorms, which combine with the different circumstances (or falseempirical beliefs) of the different groups to entail differentparticular norms. The objectivist thereby can accommodate diversityand lack of agreement at this higher level of generalization (seePhilippa Foot (1982) for this type of argument).

As in the case of cultural relativism, the imperative of tolerance isoften seen as a normative reason for adopting moral relativism. Moralrelativism, it is argued, leads to tolerance by making us not onlymore open-minded but also alerting us to the limitations of our ownviews. Edward Westermarck, for instance, in his early classic defenseof relativism writes:

Could it be brought home to people that there is no absolute standardin morality, they would perhaps be on the one hand more tolerant andon the other more critical in their judgments. (Westermarck 1932:59)

Critics however point out that for the consistent relativist tolerancecan be only a framework-dependent virtue, while Westermarck, andothers, seem to recommend it as a universal desideratum. A secondproblem with arguing for normative moral relativism on the grounds oftolerance is known as theArgumentum ad Nazium. Relativists,as this argument goes, are not in a position to condemn even the mostabhorrent of worldviews as they are forced to admit that every pointof view is right (relative to the perspective of its beholder). W.T.Stace, arguing against Westermarck’s relativism gives an earlyexample of this type of criticism:

Certainly, if we believe that any one moral standard is as good as anyother, we are likely to be more tolerant. We shall toleratewidow-burning, human sacrifice, cannibalism, slavery, the inflictionof physical torture, or any other of the thousand and one abominationswhich are, or have been, from time approved by moral code or another.But this is not the kind of toleration that we want, and I do notthink its cultivation will prove “an advantage tomorality”. (Stace 1937: 58–59)

More moderate forms of normative moral relativism, positions thatsometimes are characterized as moral pluralism, have been defended byDavid Wong (2006) and David Velleman (2013). Moderate moralrelativists endorse the idea of diversity and plurality of ethicalvalues and accept that such values are justified according todiffering local normative frameworks, but they avoid a full blown“anything goes” relativism by maintaining that all suchframeworks are ultimately answerable to conditions for humanflourishing and other overarching universal constraints such as thevalue of accommodation (Wong 2006). (It should however be noted thatwhile theses under the description of pluralism needn’t entail acommitment to relativism, some formulations of relativism (such asBoghossian’s 2006b), include, as an essential ingredient, a“pluralist” clause. Whether particular instances of moralpluralism entail moral relativism depends entirely on the details ofrelevant claim to pluralism).

Metaethical versions of moral relativism are often motivated by thethought that ethical positions, unlike scientific beliefs, are not aptfor objective truth-evaluation. Strong realists about science such asGilbert Harman have argued that the intractability of moraldisagreements (though see Suikkannen 2024 for an overview), theabsence of convergence in ethics as opposed to the natural sciencesand mathematics, point to fundamental differences between naturalfacts and ethical values (Harman & Thompson 1996). This is ametaethical, rather than a descriptive or normative position, becauseit is a theory about the nature of ethics or morality. The ethicaldomain, Harman argue, is such that all relevant evaluations could beundertaken only in the context of social norms or personal preferencesand commitments (for critical discussion see Baghramian and Coliva2019; cf., Boghossian 2022b). Values are not objective—they arenot part of the fabric of the universe. Rather they always arise fromsome form of convention and agreement among people. Therefore, therecan be no objective or externally justified ethical knowledge orjudgment (Harman 1975). In this sense, metaethical relativism sharescommon concerns with non-cognitivist approaches to ethics. Whatdistinguishes it, however, is the insistence on the part ofmetaethical relativists that moral judgments contain an implicitrelativization to the speaker’s moral outlook (Dreier 2006:261). How do we make sense of the states of affairs that would have toobtain for such judgments to be true? (see Evers 2021) It is possibleto talk about the truth or falsity of a moral judgment but only in thecontext of pre-existing standards or value systems. For instance, wecan ask questions about just actions or judgments in the context ofstandards of justice prevalent in a society at a given time; butquestions about the objective standing of these standards do not makesense (cf., Boghossian 2017 and, in for a criticism of relativistviews about normative matters generally, Boghossian 2022a). For anoverview of moral relativism generally in metaethics, see Wong (2023).(For further discussion of moral relativism see the separate entry onthis topic. What has become known as New Moral Relativism will bediscussed below).

5. New Relativism

There is a recent version of relativism according to which some of theviews considered so far—for instance, Harman’s (1975)variety of moral relativism—will be regarded varieties ofcontextualism as opposed tobona fide relativism.This recent version—sufficiently distinct from the relativismsso far considered that it is deserving of attention in its ownright—we are calling “New Relativism”, a variety ofrelativism that has arisen out of work in the philosophy of languagein the analytic tradition, and for which the leading proponents haveincluded Max Kölbel (2003, 2004), Peter Lasersohn (2005), CrispinWright (2006) and, in particular, John MacFarlane (2005b, 2007, 2014);cf., Marques (2019). In this section we aim to (i) outline severalfeatures that individuate New Relativism; (ii) consider in turnmotivations for (and objections to) several prominent strands of it;and, finally, (iii) conclude with some philosophical problems thatface New Relativism more generally.

5.1 The individuating features of New Relativism

It is a commonplace that the truth-value of an utterance can depend onthe context in which it is uttered. If you say “I’mhappy” and I say the same sentence, your utterance may be trueand mine false. In such cases, the context of utterance plays a rolein determining which proposition the sentence expresses. This canhappen even when the sentence does not contain an overtly indexicalexpression. Thus Harman and Dreier hold that a statement of the form“A is wrong” is roughly equivalent to“A is wrong according to the moral system Iaccept”. So two utterances of (say) “Torture iswrong” can differ in truth-value if they are uttered by speakerswho accept very different moral systems.Contextualists about(for instance) moral, aesthetic and epistemic discourse will viewmoral, aesthetic and epistemic expressions likewise as indexicalexpressions but (as we’ll see) with some difficulty explainingapparent genuinedisagreement in these areas of discourse. Onthis point, New Relativists claim an important advantage overcontextualists.New relativism, by contrast withcontextualism, aims to achieve this advantagevia a much lessfamiliar form of context dependence.

Truth-relativism with respect to utterances in area of discourseD is the claim that, following MacFarlane’s notableversion of the view: the truth ofS’sD-utteranceu depends (in part) on acontext ofassessment; that is (and in short) whatS asserts,u, gets a truth value—according to thetruth-relativist’sD-semantics—only once theD-standard of theassessor is specified. Independentof the specification of such a standard,S’suassertion lacks a truth-value much as, by comparison, indexicalexpressions such as “The barn is nearby” do not get atruth-value independent of contextual facts about the context ofuse (i.e. the context in which the utterance is made). And,as a further point of clarification here: while the contextualist can,no less than the relativist, recognize a “standards” or“judge” parameter, for the contextualist, its value willbe supplied by the context ofuse, whereas the relativisttakes it to be supplied completely independently of the context ofuse, by the context of evaluation (or, as MacFarlane calls it, thecontext of assessment).

To see how this view is claimed to offer a satisfying take ondisagreement in types of discourse (see Beddor 2019), consider asimple example, concerning predicates of personal taste.Autters, “Pretzels are tasty”, andB utters,“Pretzels are not tasty”. While the semanticinvariantist (for whom the truth-value of taste predicationsis in no way context sensitive) will insist that the above exchangeconstitutes a genuine disagreement about whether pretzels are tastyand thatat least one party is wrong, contextualists andtruth-relativists have theprima facie advantageous resourcesto avoid the result that at least one party to the apparentdisagreement has made a mistake.

Thecontextualist claims that the truth-evaluable contentexpressed byA’s utterance encodesA’sstandards (cf.non-indexical contextualism). Thus,in this apparent disagreement, the proposition expressed byAis “Pretzels are tasty relative to my [A’s]standards” whileB expresses the proposition“Pretzels are not tasty relative to my [B’s]standards”. This maneuver avoids the result that at least one ofthe two parties has uttered something false, but (as the newrelativist points out) this result comes at the price of being unableto offer a clear explanation of our intuition that there is someuniform content about whichA andB disagree.

The new relativist, on the other hand, claims to be able to preserveboth the apparent subjectivity of taste discourseand (and, unlike the contextualist) our intuition thatexchanges of the form mentioned constitute genuine disagreements. Theydo this by first insisting (unlike the contextualist—though seeSuikkanen 2019) that there is a single truth-evaluable propositionwhichA affirms andB denies. In the case whereA says “Pretzels are tasty”, andBdenies this, there is a uniform content that is affirmed byA’s utterance and denied byB’s, namelythe proposition that pretzels are tasty, period. So we have agenuine disagreement. Unlike the truth-absolutist, however, the newrelativist will add that the disagreement isfaultlessbecause the proposition affirmed inA’s utterance has atruth value only relative to ajudge orstandardsparameter, and in this case:A’s standards, whenA is the assessor,B’s standards, whenB is the assessor. Hence, the truth-relativist aboutpredicates of personal taste will, by insisting that the truth ofPretzels are tasty depends on the context of assessment,allow a single proposition to be (at the same time):

(i)

true relative to the context of assessment whereA’s standards of taste are operative and

(ii)

false relative to the context of assessment whereB’s standards of taste are operative.

New Relativist views, which endorsetruth-relativism locallyfor some domain of discourse, stand in opposition to the moretraditional view of propositional content (what Cappelen &Hawthorne call “The Simple View”) according to whichpropositions bear truth and falsity asmonadic properties(cf. however, MacFarlane 2011a for some resistance to Cappelen &Hawthorne’s claim that this simple characterization should beregarded as the “received” view.)

A key source of philosophical motivation for relativizing truth in thefashion of New Relativism traces to Lewis’s (1980) andKaplan’s (1989) foundational work in semantics, according towhich sentence truth is to be understood as relative to a circumstanceof evaluation that includes world, time and location. New Relativistsinherit the formal apparatus of Lewis and Kaplan and add anotherparameter, but their reasons for doing so are quite different from thereasons that motivated the framework in the first place. WhileLewis’s and Kaplan’sreasons for“proliferating” parameters were primarily based onconsiderations to do with intensional operators (though seeYli-Vakkuri et al. 2019), the more contemporary reasons for adding ajudge or standard parameter are often to do with respecting (forinstance) disagreement data. (For further discussion here, seeKölbel (2015)). (Note that “old-style contextualism”can also be stated in Kaplan’s framework; it involves variationin content with respect to the context of utterance rather than intruth value with respect to the circumstance of evaluation).

Kaplan’s view specifically was that the need for particularparameters in the circumstance of evaluation was a function of thenon-specificity of certain propositional contents withrespect to world, time and location (see Kaplan’s (1989)analysis of indexicals). On Kaplan’s view:

A circumstance will usually include a possible state or history of theworld, a time, and perhaps other features as well. The amount ofinformation we require from a circumstance is linked to the degree ofspecificity of contents and thus to the kinds of operators in thelanguage…. (1989: 502)

John MacFarlane, a leading contemporary relativist, writes:

Taking this line of thought a little farther, the relativist mightenvision contents that are “sense-of-humor neutral” or“standard-of-taste neutral” or “epistemic-stateneutral”, and circumstances of evaluation that includeparameters for a sense of humor, a standard of taste or an epistemicstate. This move would open up room for the truth value of aproposition to vary with these “subjective” factors inmuch the same way that it varies with the world of evaluation.(MacFarlane 2007: 6–7)

Similarly, Cappelen and Hawthorne write:

Contemporary analytic relativists reason as follows: ‘Lewis andKaplan have shown that we need to relativize truth to triples of<world, time, location>[’]. … But, having alreadystarted down this road, why not exploit these strategies further? Inparticular, by adding new and exotic parameters into the circumstancesof evaluation, we can allow the contents of thought and talk to benon-specific (in Kaplan’s sense) along dimensions other thanworld, time and location. (2009: 10;edited)

A question on which New Relativists are divided, however, is:what contents are non-specific along dimensions other thanworld, time and location? It is with respect to this general questionthat different families of New Relativism are generated.

The taxonomy we offer is that a view falls within the category ofNew Relativism if, and only if, the view endorses atruth-relativist semantics (as previously outlined) for utterancetokens insome domain of discourse, such as: discourse aboutpredicates of personal taste (Lasersohn 2005; Kölbel 2003),epistemic modals (Egan 2007; Egan, Hawthorne & Weatherson 2005;MacFarlane 2011b; Stephenson 2007), future contingents (MacFarlane2003), indicative conditionals (Weatherson 2009; Kolodny &MacFarlane 2010) gradable adjectives (Richard 2004), deontic modals(Kolodny & MacFarlane 2010 and MacFarlane 2014: ch. 11) andknowledge attributions (Richard 2004); MacFarlane 2005b, 2011c, 2014),and moral judgments (Denning 2022). The motivations fortruth-relativism in each of these domains include variousconsiderations unique to those domains. We consider some of thearguments for New Relativism in four of these domains in the followingsections.

5.2 Truth Relativism and predicates of personal taste

One area of discourse that has been particularly fertile ground forNew Relativism is discourse that concernspredicates of personaltaste (e.g., “tasty” and “fun”.)

5.2.1 Lasersohn (2005) and thejudge parameter

Take a case where Mary says: “The chili is tasty” and Johnsays, “The chili is not tasty”. Lasersohn argues (much asKölbel does) that only thetruth-relativist can makesense of the nature of John and Mary’s disagreement: It is agenuine disagreement. One affirms what the other denies. And yetneither is wrong. Lasersohn argues that there is an elegant way tomake sense of the idea that John and Mary are both (in some sense)right, even though John asserts the negation of what is expressed byMary. What Lasersohn) suggests, more formally, is the introduction ofa judge parameter.

Instead of treating the content of a sentence as a set of time-worldpairs, we should treat it as a set of time-world-individual triples.We assume that the content will provide an individual to be used inevaluating the sentences for truth and falsity, just as it provides atime and world. (Lasersohn: 2005: 17)

Lasersohn adds (2005: 23) that in order to maintain an authenticallysubjective assignment of truth-values to sentences containingpredicates of personal taste, we must allow that the objective factsof the situation of utterance do not uniquely determine a judge.But who is the judge? Typically, it isus, and whenit is, the evaluation is from what Lasersohn calls anautocentricperspective. Importantly, Lasersohn allows that in certaincircumstances we take anexocentric perspective whenassessing predicates of personal taste: assessing these sentences fortruth relative to contexts in which someone other than ourselves isspecified as the judge (cf. “Come on, it’ll befun!” “Is this fun?” (2005: 26);cf.Stanley (2005: 10) for a response to Lasersohn’s program).

5.2.2 Kölbel and Faultless Disagreement

Kölbel’s (2003)faultless disagreement argumentfor relativism about predicates of personal taste features a“proof” that there isno faultless disagreementfollowed by a demonstration that the proof is indefensible. The proofproceeds from two premises: an equivalence schema

(ES)

It is true thatp iffp;

and an apparent truism about mistakes:

(T)

It is a mistake to believe a proposition that is not true.

(ES) and (T) generate the conclusion that there is no faultlessdisagreement through the following proof (see also Wright 2001:52)

(1)

A believes thatp. (Assumption)

(2)

B believes that not-p (Assumption)

(3)

p (Assumption)

(4)

not-true (not-p) 3, ES

(5)

B has made a mistake 2, 4, T

(6)

Not-p (Assumption)

(7)

Not-true (p) 6, ES

(8)

A has made a mistake (1, 6, T)

(9)

EitherA orB has made a mistake(3–8)

But because Kölbel takes (9) to be implausible in whatKölbel takes to be “discretionary” (non-objective, asKölbel sees it) areas of discourse he contends that we shouldintroduce a relativized version of (T) to avoid the conclusion that atleast one party has made a mistake.

(T***)

It is a mistake to believe a discretionary proposition that is nottrue as evaluatedfrom one’s own perspective. (2003:70)

Kölbel claims further that, for reasons of uniformity, we should“relativize truth of all propositions across theboard…” and he accordingly endorses the following versionof truth relativism:

(TR)

It is a mistake to believe a proposition that is not true inone’s own perspective. (2003: 70).

Kölbel (2003: 71) thinks that this position allows thepossibility of maintaining that faultless disagreement is impossiblein somenon-discretionary (objective) areas, and this willdepend on the relation of perspective possession (but see alsoBoghossian 2011 for the contrary view). An implication of the positionis that Kölbel’s view will allow assertions of the form:“Pretzels are not tasty, though John believes they are. And yetJohn is not mistaken”. For other discussions of faultlessdisagreement, see Richard (2008), MacFarlane (2012, 2014: ch. 6), andZeman (2019). For an attempt to countenance faultless disagreementwithin an absolutist framework, see Baker & Robson (2017).

5.2.3 Moral relativism

There is a version ofmoral relativism (e.g., Kölbel2004) that falls squarely within the New Relativist tradition. We canthink of this relativism simply as a generalization of the positionjust discussed that treatsmoral terms (e.g.,“right”, “good”) as assessment-sensitive alongwith predicates of personal taste.

Such an extension faces problems analogous to those faced bytruth-relativists about predicates of personal taste (cf. Beebe (2010)for a helpful discussion of truth-relativist semantics versusvarieties of contextualist competitors).

A broader kind of problem for this semantic thesis (as well as tomoral relativists more generally), raised by Coliva and Moruzzi (2012)is that it succumbs to theprogress argument, an argumentthat famously challenges, in particular, cultural relativists (as wellas indexical contextualists) about moral judgments by insisting thatmoral progress is both evident and not something the relativist cancountenance (e.g., Rachels 2009; cf., Pérez-Navarro, 2023). Athird and particularly important kind of worry, addressed by Capps,Lynch and Massey (2009), involvesexplaining the source andnature of moral relativity, on a truth-relativist framework.Specifically, they claim that

we ought to have some account ofwhy it is that truth in themoral domain is such that it varies with a parameter set by thecontext of assessment. (Capps, Lynch & Massey 2009: 416)

An additional problem concerns the plausibility of simply extendingdisagreement based arguments for relativism about predicates ofpersonal taste over to moral predicates like ‘right’ and‘good’. As Wedgwood (2019) has suggested, moraldisagreements, in a way that is disanalogous to disagreements aboutwhat’s tasty, implicate a kind of ‘inexcusableirrationality’ (2019: 97)—at least, if the moral truthsthat constitute moral principles are a priori knowable. To the extentthat there is a difference in inexcusability across the two cases ofdisagreement, it would be contentious to think that an argument from‘faultless disagreement’ to relativism in the arena ofpredicates of personal taste would extend, mutatis mutandis, to ananalogous argument in the moral arena (though see Denning 2022). Foran overview of differences between relativism, contextualism, andsubjectivism more generally in ethics (and meta-ethics), see Suikkanen2023.

5.3 Truth relativism and epistemic modals

Epistemic modality (e.g., claims of the form “S mightbeF”) is another particularly fertile ground for NewRelativists. A key reason for this is the dialectical force ofEavesdropper Arguments, which attempt to show the perils ofcontextualist treatments of utterances containing epistemic modals.Another prominent argument concerns metasemantic complexity. We willexamine both of these argument strategies. But first, let’sdistinguishepistemic modality frommetaphysicalmodality. To say thatp is metaphysically possible is tosay thatp might have been the case in the sensethat: in some possible world,p is true. To say thatp isepistemically possible is by contrast to saythatp mightbe the case, or thatp is thecasefor all we know (see the entry onVarieties of Modality). A canonical example of a statement expressing an epistemic modal isthe claimA might beF. The truth of claimsof the formA might beF will depend onwhetherF is an epistemic possibility for some individual orgroup, which is to say, thatF must not be ruled out by whatsome individual or group knows.But which individual orgroup? This is not always clear. As Egan and Weatherson (2011: 4)remark:

…statements of epistemic possibility in plain English do notmake any explicit reference to such a person, group, evidence set, orinformation state. One of the key issues confronting a semanticistattempting to theorize about epistemic modals is what to do about thislack of reference.

Eavesdropper-style cases highlight the difficulty of determiningexactly which individual’s or group’s body of informationis relevant to the truth of claims of epistemic possibility and aretaken by defenders of truth-relativism about epistemic modals tomotivate their position. A variety of different eavesdropper caseshave been given by different proponents (and attempted refuters) oftruth-relativism about epistemic modals in the literature. For ease ofexposition, we will use an especially simple version of the case, fromHawthorne’s (2007), slightly amended:

EAVESDROPPER: [Sandra] is on the way to the grocery store. I hear hersay: “Susan might be at the store. I could run into her”.No party to the conversation that I am listening in on knows thatSusan is on vacation. But I know that she is. Despite the fact that itis compatible with what the conversants know that Susan is in thestore and that the speaker will run into her, I am inclined to judgethe speaker’s [Sandra’s] modal judgments to be incorrect.(Hawthorne 2007: 92)

Egan (2007), Egan, Hawthorne and Weatherson (2005) and MacFarlane(2011b) share a similar set of diagnoses here: (i) it seems that whileSandra and I disagree about the truth value of Sandra’sstatement, neither she nor I have made a mistake; (ii) thecontextualist can’t explain this; (iii) the truth-relativistcan.

Why can’t the contextualist explain this? As noted, the truth ofclaims expressing epistemic modals must depend on what some individualor group knows. But in these cases the context of usedoesnot pick out a single such individual or group. After all, if itdid, then either Sandra or I would be wrong, but it seems that neitherof us is. That the context of use does not uniquely pick out onerelevant body of knowledge for determining the truth of epistemicmodal statements is not, as MacFarlane notes, something that can beaccommodated by “the framework of contextualism, which requiresthat the relevant body of knowledge be determined by features of thecontext of use”. (MacFarlane 2011c)

Additionally, as Egan and Weatherson (2011) suggest, any contextualistaccount of the semantics of epistemic modals thatcouldhandle eavesdropper-style cases in a principled way would be hideouslycomplicated. This motivates a metasemantic argument againstcontextualism (and a corresponding argument for relativism): ifcontextualism about epistemic modals is correct, then the semanticsfor epistemic modals will be hideously complicated; the semantics isnot hideously complicated on the truth-relativist’s proposal,therefore,ceteris paribus, truth-relativism for epistemicmodals is more plausible than contextualism. However, Glanzberg (2007)notably denies that metasemantic complexity in this case must beproblematic.

How can the relativist accommodate eavesdropper cases? MacFarlane(2011b) articulates the relativist solution: Sandra and I disagreeabout the truth-value of a singleproposition, theproposition that Susan might be at the store. This proposition, evenwhen fully articulated, makes no reference to any particular body ofknowledge. But such propositions cannot be true or false simpliciter.They are true only relative to a context of assessment that includes abody of knowledge. In this case, the proposition is true relative to acontext of assessment wherewhat Sandra knows isoperative—a context in which Sandra is the evaluator—andfalse relative to a context of assessment wherewhat I knowis operative because I am the evaluator. Thus: both disagreement andfaultlessness are preserved (cf. Ross & Schroeder 2013for criticism and Kindermann & Egan (2019) for an alternativeproposal).

Along with MacFarlane, Egan (2007) and Stephenson (2007) have alsooffered positive defenses of truth-relativism about epistemic modals;their defenses share MacFarlane’s view that propositionsexpressing epistemic modals are non-specific along dimensions thatinclude the body of information possessed by a judge or assessor.

More recently, experimental philosophy has contributed to this debate.Empirical studies reported by Knobe & Yalcin (2014) and Khoo(2015) indicate that folk judgments about the truth of claimsfeaturing epistemic modals aligns more closely with what contextualismrather than relativism would predict. However, see Beddor and Egan(2019) for experimental results that are argued to better support (aversion of) relativism than contextualism.

5.4 Truth relativism and future contingents

Propositions termed “future contingents” are about thefuture and their truth-values are not settled by the state of theworld in the past or present (see entry onFuture Contingents, and MacFarlane 2014: ch. 9). In a deterministic world there are nofuture contingent statements in this sense. But in an indeterministicworld, statements partly about the future will often satisfy theseconditions. Consider Aristotle’s oft-cited example: thepropositionThere will be a sea battle tomorrow, uttered att. Contrast now two intuitions: the determinacy intuitionthat utterances that “turned out true” were true at thetime of utterance; and theindeterminacy intuition that, atthe time of the utterance, multiple histories are possible, includingone where there was a sea battle and the proposition is true, and onewhere there was not, and the proposition is false. Theindeterminacy intuition leads us to think the truth-value offuture contingents is indeterminate at the time of utterance, andeither true or false at a later time (cf. MacFarlane 2003;Carter 2011).

John MacFarlane (2003) thinks that both theindeterminacyintuition and thedeterminacy intuition should be takenat face value and that the only way to account for the semantics offuture contingents is to allow the truth of future contingentstatements to be, as he puts it, doubly relativized: to both thecontext of utterance and the context of assessment. When we evaluate asingle token utterance of “There will be a sea battletomorrow” produced on (say) Monday, this counts as neither truenor false when the context of assessment is the context in which theutterance is being made (as multiple possible histories are open atthis point). However the very same statement will have a determinatetruth-value relative to the context of assessment of the followingday. So we can have faultless transtemporal disagreement about thetruth-value of a single utterance (MacFarlane 2003: 36;cf.Carter 2011).

5.5 Truth relativism and knowledge ascriptions

MacFarlane (2005b) argues that “know” is sensitive to theepistemic standards at play in the context of assessment; that is, theextension of “know” varies with the context of assessment.Much as the relativist about future contingents aimed to accommodateboth the determinacy and indeterminacy intuitions, the relativistabout knowledge attributions can be viewed as offering an attemptedsynthesis between the contextualist and both sensitive and insensitivevarieties of invariantist (see entry onEpistemic Contextualism). As MacFarlane (2014: 190) puts it:

Invariantism is right that there is a single knowledge relation, andthat the accuracy of knowledge ascriptions does not depend on whichepistemic standard is relevant at the context ofuse. Butcontextualism is right that the accuracy of such ascriptions dependssomehow on contextually relevant standards. Relativism seeks tosynthesize these insights into a more satisfactory picture.

To apply this view, suppose George says, “Bill knows that hiscar is in the driveway”, while Barry says, “Billdoesn’t know that his car is in the driveway”. Accordingto the relativist, the assessment of the truth-values of Bill’sand Barry’s statements depends also on the specification of someepistemic standard. For the truth-relativist, the standard will be theoperative standard in the context of assessment. George’sutterance may be true (and Barry’s false) relative to a contextof assessment in which ordinary “low” standards are inplace, whereas Barry’s may be true (and George’s false)relative to a context of assessment in which high“Cartesian” standards are in place. See Stanley (2005: ch.7) for a detailed criticism of this kind of position from theperspective of subject-sensitive invariantism, though see alsoMacFarlane (2014: §8.5 for a reply) and Ebner (2022) from theperspective of contextualism. See also Richard (2004), for anotherversion of truth-relativism for knowledge attributions. InMacFarlane’s more recent (2014) defense of a truth-relativistsemantics for “knows”, the context of assessment is takento fix which alternatives count as relevant. See, however, Carter 2015for an argument that MacFarlane’s more recent view generatescounterintuitive results in cases of environmental epistemic luck(e.g., barn façade-style cases) and normative defeaters. SeeDinges (2020) for a challenge to truth-relativism about knowledgeascriptions on the grounds that this position generates problematicresults concerning the preservation of beliefs in memory.

5.6 General Objections to New Relativism

We turn now to two general arguments against New Relativism in all itsforms. The first is an argument fromassertion, the second anargument fromsimplicity.

5.6.1 Relativism and assertion

Two assertion-related objections to New Relativism arise from work byGareth Evans (1985) and Robert Stalnaker (1978), respectively.Greenough (2010: 2) concisely captures Evans’s challenge totruth-relativism on assertoric grounds as follows:

(1)

The question “What should [an assertor] aim at?” is alegitimate question.

(2)

Any legitimate answer to this question will generate aonce-and-for-all answer.

(3)

Any once-and-for-all answer is incompatible withTruth-Relativism

(4)

Therefore, Truth Relativism is ruled out.

The relativist must plausibly take issue with (2) or (3), (or both).For an attempt to meet Evans’ challenge, MacFarlane has defendeda way to effectively reject (2) via what Marques has called a“meet-the-challenge” norm of assertion (cf.MacFarlane 2003; though see also his 2014: ch. 5; cf., Stanley 2016:181–2)—according to which (à la Brandom1983), in assertingp one undertakes a commitment to eitherdefendingp or giving upp if the challenge cannotbe met satisfactorily (see Kölbel (2004: 308) for some otherdiscussions of this objection).

A related assertion-based challenge to truth-relativism emerges byappeal to Stalnaker’s (1978)belief transfer model ofassertion (cf. 2011). The idea here is to appeal to aplausible view of the purpose of assertion—to “transferbeliefs from assertor to members of her audience” (Egan 2007:15) and then to object that what is asserted, according to thetruth-relativist, cannot play this characteristic role; specifically,this will be because, for the truth-relativist, the asserted contentsare liable to be true relative to the speaker but false relative tothe audience. For instance, Sam hardly (on thetruth-relativist’s program) seems to “transfer”to Dean his beliefApples are tasty (which is true)by asserting this to Dean, when what Dean comes to believeApplesare tasty is something (on the assumption that Dean doesn’tlike apples) that will be false. Thus, and more generally, it’snot clear what, exactly, could be said to betransferred anda fortiori asserted. See Egan (2007) and Dinges (2017) forattempts to reconcile truth-relativism (about epistemic modals) withStalnaker’s belief-transfer model of assertion; see also McKennaand Hannon (2020) for a reply to assertion-based objections totruth-relativism in the case of knowledge ascriptions specifically.

5.6.2 Simplicity

Cappelen and Hawthorne (2009) assess the merits of New Relativism asit stands to challenge what they take to be the received view of theobjects of thought and talk, “Simplicity”, the core tenetsof which are:

(T1)

There are propositions and they instantiate the fundamentalmonadic properties of truth simpliciter and falsitysimpliciter.

(T2)

The semantic values of declarative sentences relative to contextsof utterance are propositions.

(T3)

Propositions are, unsurprisingly, the objects of propositionalattitudes, such as belief, hope, wish, doubt.

(T4)

Propositions are the objects of illocutionary acts; they are,e.g., what we assert and deny.

(T5)

Propositions are the objects of agreement and disagreement.(Cappelen & Hawthorne 2009: 1)

Cappelen and Hawthorne understand New Relativism (what they callanalytic relativism) as a direct challenge to (T1) and that,if this challenge were successful, it would consequently bring downthe more general picture they call “simplicity” (cf.,Ferrari & Wright 2017). Accordingly, Cappelen andHawthorne’s central objective is to show thattruth-relativist’s arguments aimed at undermining (T1) areultimately unsuccessful; more specifically, their broad strategy is toinsist that the arguments adduced in favor oftruth-relativism—when thoroughly understood—constitute apresumptive case forcontextualism (in the domains whererelativism was defended, and in particular, in the domain ofpredicates of personal taste).

6. Conclusion

Relativism comes in a plethora of forms that are themselves groundedin disparate philosophical motivations. There is no such thing asRelativism simpliciter, and no single argument that would establish orrefute every relativistic position that has been proposed. Despitethis diversity, however, there are commonalities and familyresemblances that justify the use of the label“relativism” for the various views we have discussed.Relativism remains a hotly disputed topic still surviving variousattempts to eliminate it from philosophical discourse. What is mostsurprising, however, is the recent popularity of some versions of thedoctrine in at least some circles of analytic philosophy.

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Other Internet Resources

• Swoyer, Chris, “Relativism”,Stanford Encyclopediaof Philosophy (Summer 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2015/entries/relativism/>. [This was the previous entry on relativism in theStanfordEncyclopedia of Philosophy — see theversion history.]
• Carter, J. Adam, “Epistemology and Relativism”,Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Epistemic Relativism, edited bibliography at PhilPapers.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Paul Boghossian, Annalisa Coliva, Steven Hales,Max Kölbel, Martin Kusch, John MacFarlane, Michela Massimi, BrianMorrissey, Brian Rabern, Tim Williamson and two anonymous referees fortheir valuable comments on various earlier drafts of this paper.