Abstract
Semantic blindness is the inability to recognize semantic features of terms one can competently use. A theory that implies semantic blindness incurs a burden to explain how one can competently use a term without realizing how the term works. An argument advanced in favor of epistemic relativism is that its main competitors, contextualism and subject-sensitive invariantism, imply that speakers suffer from semantic blindness regarding ‘knows’ while relativism has no such implication. However, there is evidence that relativism also implies semantic blindness regarding ‘knows,’ apparently crippling the case for relativism. In this paper I argue that the semantic blindness that affects relativism is not a problem at all. First, the blindness is not as widespread as it appears. It does not prevent ordinary speakers from expressing important epistemic truths. Further, I provide an error theory for relativism that has three features that render it unproblematic: (1) there is evidence independent of relativism that people make this error, (2) relativism predicts this error; it is not an ad hoc rescue, (3) the error only occurs in rare and obscure situations. People are fallible and finite, and assuming relativism is true, they make mistakes exactly where we should expect them to.
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Notes
The line of objection presented here is presented in Schiffer (1996) and Hawthorne (2004), among other places. Other manifestations of semantic blindness for contextualism exist, such as problems with knowledge claims embedded in belief reports (Cappelen and Lepore 2005), but retraction cases are a good poster child that summarizes semantic blindness.
Some SSI theorists claim that there is an error here, but it is not a semantic one, for example, Stanley (2005). I will not evaluate such defenses here.
The classic example of relative truth is Kaplan’s view of tense; see Kaplan (1989).
Here, I am ignoring indexicals in ‘S’ and ‘\(p\)’. We can assume that the semantic value of indexicals has already been determined.
A similar case is presented in Montminy (2009), for similar purposes.
The importance of the belief operator as demonstration of the existence of the standards parameter is defended in Brogaard (2008).
There are problems when this is taken as a rigorous account of epistemic modality. However, the argument here only requires that this is normally how people think of knowledge and epistemic possibility. See DeRose (1991), Egan (2007), and Kratzer (2012) for rigorous attempts to explain epistemic modality. Note that according to these accounts, epistemic possibility is still approximately the dual of knowledge.
Unless otherwise noted, ‘might’ refers to epistemic possibility.
At the very least, it can be easy to assume that ‘In another context, \(\lnot p\) might be true’ implies ‘It might be the case that \(\lnot p\) might be true.’ This weaker error leads to the same result.
The prevalence of this confusion of standards shifts versus modal claims has not been directly experimentally tested in psychology, but below I present several lines of evidence in support of the existence of this error.
In an article by Michael W. Austin, online at http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ethics-everyone/201201/rejecting-moral-relativism, accessed September 1, 2014.
Interestingly, the authors of this study seem to make the same kind of error in describing antirealism: “Moral antirealists deny the existence of moral facts, maintaining there are no real answers to moral questions.” (Young and Durwin 2013, p. 302).
This appears to be how Kindermann (2011) interprets the data.
This treatment of the paradox differs from the response Kindermann (2011) offers on behalf of relativism. His suggested explanation is that we assess ‘I do not know that I am not a BIV’ using high standards, but mistakenly apply low standards to ‘I know that I have hands’. As he notes, this response requires one person to employ two standards at once without realizing it. My response lacks this implication.
This does not mean that we have only conditional knowledge. It means that from a skeptical context, the conditional knowledge claim is as far as we can go in ascribing success to lower standards contexts.
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Rancourt, B.T. Epistemic relativism and semantic blindness. Synthese 192, 859–876 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-014-0611-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-014-0611-2