Epistemic relativism

1. Relativism defined

The term ‘epistemic relativism’ has been used in a bewildering variety of ways. Here, we focus on an account that takes epistemic relativism to be a species of normative cognitive pluralism (see Cognitive pluralism). Normative cognitive pluralism claims that there is no unique system of reasoning (or of forming and revising beliefs) that people ought to use, because various quite different systems can all be equally good. An account of what makes a system of reasoning a good one is relativistic if the assessments of cognitive systems it offers are sensitive to facts about the person or group using the system. If systems of reasoning are evaluated in this way, then in general it will make no sense to ask whether one system is better than another: rather, we must ask whether one system is better than another for a given person or group.