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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Epistemic Relativism, Steven Luper
Epistemic Relativism, Steven Luper
Philosophy Faculty Research
Epistemic relativism rejects the idea that claims can be assessed from a universally applicable, objective standpoint. It is greatly disdained because it suggests that the real 'basis' for our views is something fleeting, such as "the techniques of mass persuasion" (Thomas Kuhn 1970) or the determination of intellectuals to achieve "solidarity" (Rorty 1984) or "keep the conversation going" (Rorty 1979). But epistemic relativism, like skepticism, is far easier to despise than to convincingly refute, for two main reasons. First, its definition is unclear, so we cannot always tell where relativism leaves off and other views, such as skepticism or subjectivism, …
Theory And Practice In Plato's Theaetetus: The Question Of Knowledge And The Primacy Of Dialectic, Tushar Irani
Theory And Practice In Plato's Theaetetus: The Question Of Knowledge And The Primacy Of Dialectic, Tushar Irani
The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter
Most studies of the Theaetetus concentrate on Plato’s examination of Protagoras’s ‘Man is the Measure’ doctrine— and rightly so. The bulk of the dialogue is after all devoted to an exhaustive critique of this doctrine and its consequences, and in order to understand Plato’s views it is surely crucial to determine what position he sets up in contrast to his own. Commentators differ, however, when it comes to the finer points of Protagoras’s position— particularly concerning the validity of Plato’s infamous self-refutation argument against the Measure Doctrine at 171A6-C7—and its relation to Heraclitean flux. After some preliminaries on the overall …
Wittgenstein And The Recovery Of Virtue, G. Scott Davis
Wittgenstein And The Recovery Of Virtue, G. Scott Davis
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Modern, scientific, man doesn't see miracles, only odd phenomena that call out for more thorough study. Ethics, like the miraculous, doesn't defy scientific explanation; it just doesn't exist. In what follows I hope to do two things., On the one hand, I want to embrace Wittgenstein's rejection of ethics as theory, in the sense of a systematic body of knowledge about the world. On the other, I hope to suggest that this rejection opens up conceptual space for understanding ethics as a critical human enterprise.