Beliefs and ideas: socio-cognitive relativity beyond relativism

Making a Difference. Humanism and the Humanities, 2011

There are a number of ways of understanding the notion of relativism. Here I will discuss one general form, namely, relativism as an umbrella term for a set of problems in and for the cultural or human sciences (historicism, intersectionality, linguistic relativity, etc).

This paper revisits, from a new angle, some of the debates over the relativism of the "Sociology of Scientific Knowledge" (=SSK). The new angle is provided by recent work on relativism in epistemology and the philosophy of language. I defend three theses. First, SSK-relativism is not an instance of Paul Boghossian's well-known "template" for relativism. Second, SSK-relativism is therefore not directly threatened by arguments targeting this template position. And third, SSK-relativism is nevertheless in the vicinity of this template, and it offers at least sketches of arguments for distinctive and original relativist theses.

ABSTRACT Relativism: a conceptual analysis Vittorio Villa In my paper I will try, in the first part, to give a conceptual definition of relativism, with the aim of singling out the possible basic elements common to all the most relevant relativist conceptions. In conformity with my definition, we have to qualify as “relativistic” all the conceptions according to which all or a relevant part of – cognitive, semantic, ethic, cultural, etc. - criteria and beliefs are necessary dependent on a given context (paradigm, culture, language, conceptual scheme, etc.) that is by its turn chosen as point of reference. From this point of view it is “absolutism” which stands in radical opposition to relativism. In the second part of the paper I will deal with some important critical observations which have been recurrently aroused against relativism. From this point of view, a quite serious problem arises from the fact that many relativists would like to have the chance, at least in some important cases, of expressing some objective judgments, for instance in terms of ethically “right” or “wrong”, or in terms of empirically “true” or “false”. In the third part of my paper, in order to answer to this difficulty, I will propose a sketch of a viable and coherent relativistic conception: a conception that doesn’t incorporate at all absolutist elements and that nevertheless could be able to explain the presence of a common core of criteria and beliefs in all our conceptual schemes and beliefs. Two distinctions are of particular importance here: firstly, the distinction between local conceptual schemes and long term frameworks, through which it is possible to clarify that even the most stable and consolidated beliefs common to our conceptual schemes are after all relative; secondly, the distinction between environment (the commonly shared source of our stimulations and perceptions) and world (the subject of our linguistic and theoretical representations, which is always a human construction). Through this last distinction it becomes possible, in my opinion, to speak, even inside a coherent relativist epistemological conception, of the existence of an objective reality. Vittorio Villa

geocities.ws, 2002

The research on which the present paper makes a point is aimed at designing a cognitive model of Albert Einstein's discovery that is based on fundamental Einstein's publications and placed, ideally, at a meso-level, between macro-historical and micro-cognitive reconstructions (e.g. protocol analysis). As in a cognitive-historical analysis, we will trace some discovery heuristics in the construction of representations, that are on a continuum with those we employ in ordinary problem solving (Nersessian 1992). Firstly, some theory-specific, reflexive heuristics -named orientative heuristics -are traced: inner perfection, explain-or-assume, explanatory correspondence, and covariance/invariance. Then, other well-known abstractive heuristics as analogical and imagistic reasoning, thought experiment, limiting case analysis (e.g. Nersessian 1992) are shown occurring in Einstein's key-publications. A sketch of a socio-cognitive model for his discovery is then presented following two suggestions: (a) an idea of van Fraassen about discovery phases, and (b) the Humean distinction between beliefs and ideas.

A standpoint where the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing (this is the result of a far too pointed separation of the specialized sciences from epistemology), can only lead to the sterility of contemporary philosophy.

A standpoint where the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing (this is the result of a far too pointed separation of the specialized sciences from epistemology), can only lead to the sterility of contemporary philosophy.

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Science, 2010

We depend upon the community for justified belief in scientific theory. This dependence can suggest that our individual belief in scientific theory is justified because the community believes it to be justified. This idea is at the heart of an anti-realist epistemology according to which there are no facts about justification that transcend a community's judgement thereof. Ultimately, knowledge and justified belief are simply social statuses. When conjoined with the lemma that communities can differ in what they accept as justified, epistemological anti-realism entails epistemological relativism. Further, this lemma can also be used to generate an argument for relativism and, thereby, for antirealism. So if an epistemologically realist account of our justification for belief in scientific theory is to be given, then it must be possible, first, to defend a realist interpretation of the idea that individual belief can be community-justified and second, to defend it in a way that is compatible with the fact of possible community diversity. This paper tries to meet these challenges.

Common sense and the pursuit of science both assume that there is a stable external reality including things, animals, and other people whose properties cannot be altered merely by our wishing that they were different, or by how we define them, and that we come to understand these properties by experience and reasoning. While absolute certainty can never be attained, at least some closer approximation to the truth can be reached by the successive elimination of errors.