close connections between the concept of truth and concepts such as
knowledge, rationality, and justification, cognitive relativism is
often taken to encompass, or imply, the relativity of these other
notions also. Thus, epistemological relativism, which asserts the
relativity of knowledge, may be understood as a version of cognitive
relativism, or at least as entailed by it.
This kind of relativism can take different forms depending on the
nature of the standpoint or framework to which truth is relativized.
If truth is relativized to the individual subject, for instance, the
result is a form of subjectivism. If the standpoint is an entire
culture, the result is some form of cultural relativism. Other
possible frameworks include languages, historical periods, and
conceptual schemes. These frameworks do not exclude one another, of
course, and in the positions developed by thinkers such as Thomas Kuhn
and Michel Foucault (both generally regarded as holding relativistic
views of truth) they are presented as interwoven.
Cognitive relativism is not so widely held as moral relativism. Moral
relativism is the view that moral judgments (those employing concepts
like good, bad, right or wrong) should only be assessed relative to a
particular, limited standpoint (usually that of a specific culture).
This doctrine became a commonplace for many growing up in modernized
societies in the second half of the twentieth century and is virtually
the default position encountered among undergraduates by countless
philosophy instructors today. One major reason for its popularity is
the importance attached by so many thinkers to the distinction between
facts and values. Factual judgments are generally thought to be
objective and provable; value judgments, by contrast, are commonly
held to express subjective attitudes and to be unprovable, rather like
judgments of taste.
Gradually, however, cognitive relativism has gained in credibility as
the sharp logical dichotomy between facts ands values has been
increasingly questioned. Instead of a dichotomy, many now argue for a
spectrum of judgments with a greater or lesser evaluative component to
them. Moreover, these components themselves may not be seen as
radically different; they may, for instance, simply reflect the degree
to which a judgment is controversial within a particular community,
with what we call factual judgments being the least disputed. From
this point of view, cognitive relativism is broader and more
fundamental than moral relativism, for it asserts that the truth value
of all judgments, not just moral ones, is relative.
1. Ancient relativism
In Western philosophy, relativism first appears as a philosophical
outlook associated with the Sophists in fifth century Greece.
Cosmopolitan and skeptically inclined, these traveling intellectuals
were struck by the variations in law, mores, practices and beliefs
found in different communities. They drew the conclusion that much of
what is commonly regarded as natural is in fact a matter of
convention. There is thus no objectively right way to worship the gods
or organize society, any more than there is an objectively correct way
to dress or to prepare food. The main critical thrust of this way of
thinking was directed against traditional moral and political values,
but the relativity of truth itself seems to be implicated in
Protagoras' famous assertion that "man is the measure of all things–of
things that are, that they are, and of things that are not, that they
are not." The fact that the sophists taught rhetoric, and in stressing
the value of persuasion appeared indifferent to questions of truth,
reinforced this attitude.
The first great critic of relativism was Plato. In the Theatetus, he
links Protagorean relativism to the view that knowledge should be
identified with sense perception, and also to the Heracleitean
doctrine that reality is in a continual state of flux. Plato's
criticisms of Protagoras' position prefigures arguments advanced
against relativism by its critics ever since. One objection he raises
is that relativism collapses the distinction between truth and
falsity; for if each individual is really the "measure" of what is,
then everyone would be infallible, which is absurd. The implausibility
of the Protagorean thesis is especially obvious, Plato argues, when we
consider two people making incompatible predictions about the future.
Events will prove that one of them, at least, was not a good measure
of what is true. His other main objection is that relativism is
self-refuting. If Protagoras is right, then whatever a person thinks
is true, is true. But in that case, Protagoras must concede that those
who think relativism is false are correct. So if Protagorean
relativism is true, it must also be false.
Although skepticism about the possibility of knowledge became part of
the mainstream of ancient philosophy, relativism did not. Socrates and
Plato may be willing to concede that human understanding, in this life
at least, is very limited, but they do not doubt the existence of an
ideal vantage point from which the objective truth about the world
could be known. Also, Aristotle appears fairly confident that such a
vantage point is accessible to human reason properly employed.
2. The emergence of relativism in modern times
Between Aristotle and Kant there are no major Western philosophers who
one could plausibly describe as cognitive relativists. Montaigne and
Hume certainly stressed the importance of custom in shaping peoples'
beliefs, especially on moral matters; but this led them towards
skepticism rather than relativism. The door to modern relativism was
unlocked by Kant's claim in the Critique of Pure Reason that the only
world we can know or talk about meaningfully is one that has been
shaped by the human mind. On Kant's view, the concept of "objective
reality" is employed speculatively and hence illegitimately if it is
taken to refer to reality as it is independent of our experience of
it. This obviously has implications for the traditional notion of
objective truth. The judgments we call true are true for us and of our
world; but to claim they are true in the sense of describing an
independently existing reality is to go beyond what we can
meaningfully or justifiably assert.
Kant is not generally considered a relativist since he held that the
forms our mind imposes on the world are common to all human beings.
Truths like the truths of geometry or the statement that every event
is caused are thus universally accepted and constitute a priori
knowledge. The forms we impose on experience also give the world a
certain necessary character that is independent of our beliefs and
wishes. For instance, causes must precede their effect, and time can
only flow in one direction. In this sense, the forms confer
objectivity on the world we experience, and our well-founded judgments
about that world can be called objectively true. Later thinkers,
however, took Kant's ideas further down the road toward fully-fledged
relativism. Hegel, while upholding a concept of "absolute knowledge",
allows every stage that human consciousness has passed through in the
historical development of civilization to express an outlook that is
true in a partial way. Marx highlights the influence of the mode of
production along with class and economic interests in shaping the way
people understand their world; and although he appears to recognize
the epistemic authority of science in some areas, he rejects the idea
of a neutral standpoint from which to adjudicate between different
views of social reality. Nietzsche is explicitly relativistic about
both moral values and truth, preferring to evaluate claims according
to what sort of will to power the claims express rather than according
to their objective truth-value.
In the twentieth century, a relativistic view of truth can be found in
or inferred from the work of many major philosophers, including James,
Dewey, Wittgenstein, Quine, Kuhn, Gadamer, Foucault, Rorty, and most
of those commonly labeled "postmodernists". Numerous others, including
some who regard themselves as staunch opponents of relativism, have
been accused of harbouring relativistic tendencies. There is thus a
general consensus that modern philosophy has shifted in a relativistic
direction. Even fierce critics of relativism like Allan Bloom (author
of The Closing of the American Mind) concede this. Indeed, it is this
trend, along with its trickle down effect on the outlook of rising
generations, that occasions lamentations such as his.
3. The definition of relativism
There is no general agreed upon definition of cognitive relativism.
Here is how it has been described by a few major theorists:
* "Reason is whatever the norms of the local culture believe it to
be". (Hilary Putnam, Realism and Reason: Philosophical Papers, Volume
3 (Cambridge, 1983), p. 235.)
* "The choice between competing theories is arbitrary, since there
is no such thing as objective truth." (Karl Popper, The Open Society
and its Enemies, Vol. II (London, 1963), p. 369f.)
* "There is no unique truth, no unique objective reality" (Ernest
Gellner, Relativism and the Social Sciences (Cambridge, 1985), p. 84.)
* "There is no substantive overarching framework in which
radically different and alternative schemes are commensurable"
(Richard Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism (Philadelphia,
1985), pp. 11-12.)
* "There is nothing to be said about either truth or rationality
apart from descriptions of the familiar procedures of justification
which a given society—ours—uses in one area of enquiry" (Richard
Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism and Truth: Philosophical Papers, Volume
1 (Cambridge, 1991), p. 23.)
Without doubt, this lack of consensus about exactly what relativism
asserts is one reason for the unsatisfactory character of much of the
debate about its coherence and plausibility. Another reason is that
very few philosophers are willing to apply the label "relativist" to
themselves. Even Richard Rorty, who is widely regarded as one of the
most articulate defenders of relativism, prefers to describe himself
as a "pragmatist", an "ironist" and an "ethnocentrist".
Nevertheless, a reasonable definition of relativism may be
constructed: one that describes the fundamental outlook of thinkers
like Rorty, Kuhn, or Foucault while raising the hackles of their
critics in the right way.
Cognitive relativism consists of two claims:
(1) The truth-value of any statement is always relative to some
particular standpoint;
(2) No standpoint is metaphysically privileged over all others.
The first of these claims asserts the relativity of truth, obviously
an essential element in this form of relativism. Oddly, though, this
is not the most controversial part of the doctrine. After all, even
committed realists might be willing to conceive of objective truth as
equivalent to "true from a God's eye point of view" or "true from the
standpoint of the cosmos". It is this second claim, the denial of any
metaphysically privileged standpoint, that most provokes relativism's
critics. A brief look at the role of this thesis in the thought of
three leading relativists–Kuhn, Rorty, and Foucault—will help reveal
why it should be so controversial.
In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn argues that science
progresses by means of what he calls paradigm shifts. A paradigm
theory is an overarching theory like Dalton's atomic theory or the
theory of evolution. These provide the background conceptual scheme
within which what Kuhn calls "normal science" occurs. On Kuhn's
account, a paradigm shift such as that by which Copernican astronomy
displaced the Ptoemeic view of the universe should not be thought of
as a shift between two different ways of looking at an independent
reality. Rather, theory and observation are so intertwined that the
shift amounts to a change in the reality the scientists inhabit.
Consequently, there is no independent standpoint from which a paradigm
shift can be judged to take us closer to a true picture of the way
things really are. Kuhn likens debates over paradigms to political
controversies, saying that "as in political revolutions, so in
paradigm choice—there is no standard higher than the assent of the
relevant community." (p. 110)
Richard Rorty extends what Kuhn says about science to every other
sphere of culture, particularly politics. The traditional view–call it
Platonist, absolutist, objectivist or realist–is that when we do
something like abolish slavery we move closer to an independent ideal
and we bring our way of thinking closer to the One Right Way, the way
dictated by reason or by our essential human nature. Rorty thinks this
sort of thinking has been valuable in the past; but in more recent
times it has become constraining rather than liberating. He therefore
urges us to see intellectual and cultural progress as simply
consisting in our exchanging one vocabulary for another. Descriptions
of human beings that view them as entitled to equal rights before the
law, and descriptions of the solar system that views it as
heliocentric are both preferable to the descriptions they replaced;
but not because they are closer to the truth. In both cases, we should
prefer the newer descriptions on pragmatic grounds; they better enable
us to achieve our purposes.
Michel Foucault's relativism is similar to Kuhn's in being based on
and justified by historical researches. The domain of his studies is
different, however. In works like Madness and Civilization, The Order
of Things, and Discipline and Punish, Foucault tries to show how what
we call "reason", "science", "knowledge" and "truth" are socially
constituted and shaped by political forces. He argues that in order to
pass muster as "scientific" or as "rational", a discourse must satisfy
certain conditions, and these conditions are socially and historically
relative, reflecting the needs and interests of existing power
structures. This relativity is more obvious in the case of
classifications based on distinctions such as normal-perverted,
natural-unnatural, rational-insane, or healthy-sick. But Foucault
suggests that it applies also to other, more epistemologically central
distinctions such as scientific-unscientific, knowledge-error, and
true-false. The ideal of a neutral standpoint transcending epochs and
interests is thus a chimera.
4. Arguments for relativism
Relativism is the radical offspring of non-realism, which is itself
descended from the idealism of Berkeley and Kant. Non-realism holds
that we cannot meaningfully talk about they way things are independent
of our experience of them: to use Michael Dummett's formulation, what
makes a statement true is not independent of our procedures for
deciding it is true. The main argument in favour of non-realism is
essentially negative: it avoids the difficulties endemic to
metaphysical realism (a.k.a. "objectivism" or "absolutism").
Realists hold that our judgments are true when they accurately
describe or correspond to a reality that exists independently of our
perceptions, conceptions, theories or desires. On this view, a true
statement such as "water contains oxygen" describes a fact about this
independent reality. It rests on a scientific model that may be said
to "carve nature at the joints". But an obvious question arises: how
can we determine that our judgments are true in this sense? The
obvious answer is that we test them by making experiments and
observations. I say it will snow today, and I test this by watching
the sky. I say water contains oxygen and I confirm this by showing
that one of the elements separated out by electrolysis supports
combustion. When our assertions are decisively confuted by experience,
we conclude that they are false—i.e. they describe a state of affairs
that does not obtain.
Relativists accept that this is how we normally conceive of truth and
falsity—in ordinary usage, the word "true" means something like
"corresponds to the facts"–and as an account of our everyday epistemic
procedures it is unobjectionable. But they argue that it loses
coherence if it is elevated to the metaphysical level. For what is
really happening, even when we are confirming the most mundane belief
about the empirical world, is that we are satisfying ourselves that
this belief coheres with our other beliefs. We confirm that the sea is
salty by tasting it or by conducting a chemical analysis of seawater.
But these procedures only confirm our belief about sea water in the
sense of showing it to be compatible with or even entailed by a host
of other beliefs: for instance, that the sample we are examining is
typical; that nothing else tastes quite like salt; that our sensory
faculties are trustworthy on this occasion; that salt tastes roughly
the same at different times. What we can never do, argue relativists
and other non-realists, is check the degree of correspondence between
our judgments and reality as it is independent of our experience of
it. To do this we would have to take a "sideways on" view of the
cognitive relation between subject and object. But this is impossible
since any vantage point we adopt will necessarily be that of the
subject. For the same reason, we cannot compare our overall conceptual
scheme or theoretical model of reality with reality as it is "in
itself."
The driving idea behind empiricism and the upshot of Kant's critique
of speculative metaphysics is thus that concepts must be tied to
experience if they are to have legitimate employment in science or
philosophy. Relativists argue that the metaphysical realist's concept
of truth fails this test, for it takes the notion of "correspondence
with reality" out of its everyday employment, where it is genuinely
useful, and tries to press it into metaphysical service, where it is
neither useful nor legitimate. So even if, in its normal usage,
"truth" means something like correspondence with reality, the ultimate
criterion of truth turns out to be coherence with other beliefs. To
put it another way: our philosophical conception of truth cannot
simply be an expanded version of our commonsense notion of truth as
correspondence. And this implies that truth must always be relative to
some belief system, to some particular epistemic standpoint. This is
the first of the two theses identified above as constituting the
doctrinal kernel of relativism. Numerous philosophers have affirmed
it. Yet many of these have sought to avoid relativism by rejecting the
second thesis—that no standpoint is metaphysically privileged over all
others.
This second thesis is what gives relativism its bad name. Critics
commonly reduce it to the claim that any point of view is as good as
any other and then attack it with some variation of Plato's arguments
against Protagoras. But virtually no well-known philosophers actually
hold that all standpoints are of equal worth. Richard Rorty, for
instance, who is widely regarded as a relativist, dismisses that
position as "silly." (Richard Rorty, Objectivism, Relativism, and
Truth, p. 89). Rorty, Kuhn and most other relativists accept that one
can have cogent reasons for preferring one standpoint to another; the
preferred point of view may, for instance, exhibit greater logical
consistency or greater predictive power than other available
perspectives. But they argue that such reasons cannot confer any
special metaphysical status on the standpoint in question. They
cannot, for instance, show it to be the one favoured by God, or
dictated by Reason, or most in accord with human nature.
Relativists typically justify this conclusion along the following
lines. Any proof of a standpoint's superiority must rest on premises
that express fundamental assumptions and basic values. For instance,
arguments for the superiority of the standpoint of modern science over
that of religion will presuppose the value of consistency, of solving
theoretical puzzles, and of being able to manipulate one's
environment. A person who defends the literal truth of the bible but
shares these values is likely to be persuaded fairly quickly by these
arguments. But a person who holds that truth appears to humans as
paradoxical, and who values tradition and religious faith over
experimental evidence and predictive power will not be persuaded. An
argument can only be convincing to one who accepts its premises. Some
premises, though, like those just mentioned, are so fundamental that
they are not usually argued for at all. Rather, they are constitutive
of a particular outlook.
The relativists' thesis is not that one cannot support standpoints
with arguments; it is that in the end all such arguments must be
circular since they inevitably rest on premises that are themselves
part of the standpoint. Critics will here point out that there is a
difference between denying that the superiority of one standpoint over
all others can be proved and denying that such a standpoint exists. In
reply, relativists are likely to claim that this distinction is an
abstract one that no consistent empiricist or pragmatist would make.
To insist that one standpoint is objectively superior to all others,
they argue, even though there is no way of proving this, is dogmatic
and pointless; to claim that one's own standpoint enjoys this unique
but undemonstrable superiority is dogmatic and implausible.
A critic might also object that what relativists call "cogent" reasons
for preferring one standpoint to another are not epistemically
relevant: that is, they do provide grounds for thinking that the
standpoint generates or ensures beliefs that are objectively true. But
this is clearly a point most relativists would be willing to concede.
The notion of objective truth referred to here is not a concept for
which they have a use, preferring instead something like William
James' conception of truth as "what is good in the way of belief."
5. Objections to relativism
Critics of relativism are legion, but the objections leveled against
it are usually of two kinds, both pioneered by Plato in his critique
of Protagoras. One line of attack tries to show that relativism is
incoherent because it is self-refuting. The other common objection is
that relativism, if taken seriously, would have bad practical
consequences. Let us consider both of these in turn.
a. Relativism is Self-Refuting
A doctrine is self-refuting if its truth implies its falsehood.
Relativism asserts that the truth-value of a statement is always
relative to some particular standpoint. This implies that the same
statement can be both true and false. The qualification that the
statement is true relative to standpoint A but false relative to
standpoint B may save relativism from the charge of embracing gross
contradictions. But it still clearly implies that relativism itself is
false, at least relative to some standpoints. One might say that it is
just as much false as it is true, in which case there seems to be no
good reason to prefer relativism to alternative positions such as
realism.
One possible response to this objection would be to modify the theory
and hold that all truths are relative except for the truth that all
truths are relative. On this view, the relativist thesis enjoys a
unique status, being true in some non-relativistic sense. This
position may be coherent, but it is rather implausible. It is hard to
see what could justify granting the thesis of relativism this
exceptional status. A more plausible option is for relativists to
concede that their view is false relative to at least some
non-relativistic theoretical frameworks but to deny that this
admission is damaging. Relativism, they can claim, is simply in the
same situation as any other theory. The theory of evolution is true
from the perspective of modern science and false from the perspective
of Christian fundamentalism. Relativists deny that one of these
perspectives is demonstrably better than the other. But this does not
mean that they cannot affirm the scientific perspective, and do so for
cogent reasons. In the same way, they can acknowledge that relativism
is false from the standpoint of metaphysical realism; but they can do
this without inconsistency or incoherence since they are not
metaphysical realists, and they have reasons for preferring relativism
to realism.
A variation on the charge that relativism is self-refuting is the
argument that it is somehow self-refuting for relativists to assert or
to argue for their position. This line of attack has been pressed
forcefully by Hilary Putnam and others. Putnam's argument is that
ordinary rational discourse presupposes a non-relativistic notion of
truth. Jûrgen Habermas offers a similar sort of argument in his
critique of postmodernists like Foucault and Derrida, claiming that a
commitment to truth, like a commitment to sincerity, is a necessary
condition of successful communication.
Relativists, however, are likely to remain skeptical about these
alleged presuppositions and implicit commitments. It may be true that
when we engage in rational discourse we implicitly commit ourselves to
the truth of what we are saying. But it is not at all obvious that we
implicitly commit ourselves to a non-relativistic conception of truth.
And even if this were the case, it is not clear why this supposed
presupposition of everyday communication should be accorded so much
respect and made the basis for a philosophical account of truth. Our
everyday notions of space and time may also be non-relativistic, but
we do not demand that physicists' theories of space and time conform
to our pre-scientific ideas.
b. Relativism has Pernicious Consequences
This criticism also was first ventured by Plato and continues to be
endorsed by many. Cognitive relativism is thought to undermine our
commitment to improving our ways of thinking rather as moral
relativism is thought to undermine our belief in the possibility of
moral progress. Several reasons have been given to support this
anxiety. To some, the fact that relativism countenances the
possibility of multiple true but incompatible points of view entails a
kind of epistemic nihilism. If creationism and the theory of
evolution, Ptolemaic and Copernican astronomy, astrology and modern
psychology are all equally true, then what purpose is served by
developing new scientific theories? All views are of equal value, so
why not just rest content with whatever happens to be "true for us"?
Against this, relativists can offer two responses. First, truth is not
the only epistemic value. We can also prefer theories on the basis of
such values as coherence with our other beliefs, predictive power, and
practical fruitfulness. Second, by endorsing relativism one does not
lose the right to judge beliefs according to their truth or falsity.
Modern relativists will believe that the earth orbits the sun and that
Copernicus' discovery represented scientific progress over earlier
astronomy. But their philosophical account of the status of these
beliefs will be relativistic. The Copernican theory is true and its
acceptance represents progress according to the values and concerns
that constitute the modern scientific standpoint—a standpoint shared
by both relativists and non-relativists. The difference between them
is that the relativists do not believe this standpoint can be proved
superior to others except by arguments that are essentially circular
and question-begging.
Hillary Putnam presses a slightly different version of the above
objection. Relativism, he argues, tries to "naturalize" the concept of
reason. What he means is that relativists try to discuss questions of
truth, knowledge, and rationality in a thoroughly descriptive,
non-normative way. Like social scientists afraid of allowing
value-judgments to creep into their work, they take a detached stance
and simply report the epistemic customs and practices of different
cultures, eschewing any impulse to endorse or criticize them. And this
amounts, in Putnam's words, to "mental suicide". For, while particular
norms of rationality will be entrenched within a particular culture,
reason has an inalienable critical or transcendent function which can
be used to criticize existing epistemic norms. Relativism can thus be
accused of encouraging a certain kind of intellectual passivity.
Relativists have also been accused of embracing determinism, and
certainly thinkers like Nietzsche and Foucault sometimes invite this
charge. The epistemic norms of a culture or a period are taken to be
shaped by non-rational forces such as class interests, technology, or
the will to power of a group or individual. And what people then come
to believe is seen as a function of these norms. For example, Foucault
suggests that the classification of homosexuality as a disease results
from employing a certain kind of theoretical framework, one that
posits a sharp distinction between the natural and the unnatural and
correlates the former with the healthy, the latter with the sick. And
this framework becomes established because it serves certain
interests. So truth is identified with what is believed to be true,
and what is believed to be true is determined by larger social forces
operating within a culture or historical epoch.
This deterministic tendency, like the attempt to naturalize reason, is
held by critics to entail, or at least encourage, a renunciation of
the longstanding project of using reason to criticize existing norms,
beliefs, and practices in order to furnish ourselves with better ones.
Relativism is thus associated with the counter-Enlightenment aspects
of postmodernism. But association is not the same thing as logical
entailment. It may well be true that some relativists are drawn
towards determinism or feel they must eschew value judgments. But it
is not clear that these tendencies must be part of a relativistic
outlook. Other relativists will argue that the connection between
relativism and determinism, say, is historical and contingent rather
than logical and necessary. In their view, one can consistently
endorse a relativistic view of truth while still being committed to
the relative superiority of some views over others, to the value of
critical reflection, and to the possibility of using reason as an
instrument of scientific and social progress.
6. Conclusion
Cognitive relativism continues to be an important but controversial
position that one encounters in contemporary debates about the nature
of truth, knowledge, rationality, and science. These debates can
sometimes be confusing because people neither agree about exactly what
relativism affirms, nor about whose views should be described as a
relativistic.
Critics of relativism sometimes seem to assume that relativists are
denying that they believe—or denying themselves the right to
believe—obvious truths. But the more sophisticated relativists do not
deny that statements like "the earth is round" are true. They just
favour a certain philosophical account of what is involved and implied
when we describe such statements as "true". The situation here is
reminiscent of the debate between idealists and some of their
materialist critics. The critics charge idealists like Berkeley with
holding that our sense perceptions are illusions, and they think they
can refute this doctrine by doing things like kicking stones. But the
idealists do not see themselves as holding or implying any such view.
They just think that the materialist explanation of our
sense-experiences is philosophically problematic; so they offer what
they take to be a more coherent alternative.
On the other hand, relativism is sometimes advanced quite crudely.
Then, instead of being a philosophical view about the status of our
beliefs and the limitations on how we might support these beliefs, it
becomes an excuse for accepting uncritically one's own culture's
assumptions and epistemic norms; or it serves to rationalize
intellectual apathy or slackness masquerading as tolerance of diverse
opinions. Just as idealists still have to negotiate what we normally
call the material world, so relativists have to make decisions about
whether particular claims are true or false. Their philosophical
relativism may incline them towards being more open-minded and
tolerant than dyed-in-the-wool absolutists and objectivists. But they
cannot avoid adopting specific standpoints, choosing between theories,
and endorsing particular beliefs and values. At bottom, the debate
over relativism is about whether it is possible for relativists to
make these commitments consistently and sincerely.
7. References and Further Reading
* Bernstein, Richard J. Beyond Objectivism and Relativism.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985.
* Davidson, Donald. "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme."
Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association
(1974), 5-20.
* Field, Hartry. "Realism and Relativism." Journal of Philosophy
79 (1982): 553-557.
* Forster, Paul D. "What Is at Stake Between Putnam and Rorty?"
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LII, No. 3 (1992): 585-603.
* Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other
Writings. Edited by Colin Gordon. Translated by Colin Gordon, Leo
Marshall, John Mepham, and Kate Soper. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.
* Foucault, Michel. The Foucault Reader. Edited by Paul Rabinow.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1984
* Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. Second revised edition.
Translated and revised by J. Weinsheimer and D. G. Marshall. New York:
Crossroad, 1989.
* Gellner, E.. Relativism and the Social Sciences. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1985.
* Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York:
Basic Books, 1973.
* Goodman, Nelson. Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978.
* Habermas, Jürgen. The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1,
Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Translated by Thomas
McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press, 1984.
* Habermas, Jürgen. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity.
Translated by Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press,
1987.
* Hollis, Martin and Lukes, Steven (eds). Rationality and
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