Abstract
This chapter describes the five Agrippan modes (arguments) of Pyrrhonian scepticism, and explains how they function, in attenuated form, in the principal argument for epistemic relativism.
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Notes
- 1.
J. Adam Carter (2016, 76) points out that a similar dialogic argument has been understood as motivating epistemic relativism.
- 2.
See Wittgenstein (1963, §217): “If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: “This is simply what I do.””
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
Several authors have pointed out that Bellarmine is unfairly characterized by the likes of Rorty (1979), and Boghossian (2006) as being rigidly dogmatic in his dealings with Galileo (Williams 2007, n. 12; Seidel 2014, 173–177). Bellarmine, unlike the Papal Qualifiers, did not insist that Galileo must be mistaken because his cosmological views conflict with the accepted interpretation of Biblical passages. Instead, he finds that Galileo’s evidence is too weak to warrant an alternative interpretation of the relevant passages, but that if such empirical evidence can be found, an alternative interpretation will have to be provided. For this reason, I will focus on the Papal Qualifiers, rather than Bellarmine.
- 7.
This case, and its role in the principal argument for epistemic relativism, is discussed in Rorty (1979, 328–330), Boghossian (2006, Ch. 5), Siegel (2011), Seidel (2014, Ch. 3), and Carter (2016, Ch. 4). Hales (2006, Ch. 2) argues that cases of epistemic incommensurability proliferate in philosophy as well because Christian revelation yields beliefs that are inconsistent with those that result from appeals to a priori intuitions .
- 8.
- 9.
See also Barnes (1974, 29), quoted above, as well as Bloor (1997, 500, 2007, 261). This argument can also be found in Hacking (1982, 56). Rorty, on the other hand, uses the dogmatist horn of the Agrippan trilemma to argue for epistemic relativism:
…objectivity should be seen as conformity to the norms of justification (for assertions and for actions) we find about us. Such conformity becomes dubious and self-deceptive only when seen as something more than this – namely, as a way of obtaining access to something which “grounds” current practices of justification in something else. Such a “ground” is thought to need no justification, because it has become so clearly and distinctly perceived as to count as a “philosophical foundation.” This is self-deceptive not simply because of the general absurdity of ultimate justification’s reposing upon the unjustifiable, but because of the more concrete absurdity of thinking that the vocabulary used by present science, morality, or whatever has some privileged attachment to reality which makes it more than just a further set of descriptions. (Rorty 1979, 361)
- 10.
If, on the other hand, she wishes to provide a justification within another epistemic system, then it is this epistemic system that she should be defending.
- 11.
The relativist thesis can be understood in one of two ways. According to the first version, justification is system-relative because there are no absolute epistemic facts; on the second, it is because we do not have access to absolute epistemic facts (Seidel 2013, 146). Since a refutation of (R7) would be a refutation of both positions, I will not distinguish between them hereafter.
- 12.
See also Sankey (2012, 186).
- 13.
See, for example, Luper (2004), Hales (2006, 119–120), Boghossian (2006, Ch. 5), Sankey (2010, 2011, 2012), Seidel (2014, Ch. 3), and Kusch (2016). Sankey (2011) also finds the Agrippan argument for epistemic relativism discussed in Bartley (1984), Worrall (1989), Popper (1994), and Motterlini (1999).
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Bland, S. (2018). The Principal Argument for Epistemic Relativism. In: Epistemic Relativism and Scepticism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94673-3_2
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