Relativism and the Demise of Epistemic Foundations

Abstract

<p>The purpose of this thesis is to show that the anti-foundationalism of philosophers like Donald Davidson and Richard Rorty does not, as is commonly thought, entail relativism. Consequently, anti-foundationalists of this stripe are not vulnerable to the myriad arguments brought against the doctrine of relativism.</p> <p>Both foundationalism and relativism, it is argued, suppose that there is something (direct awareness of concrete states of affairs, intuitive self evidence, etc, on the one hand; power, consensus, coherence, etc. on the other) which 'makes truths true'. The anti-foundationalist, on the contrary, maintains that nothing does so. Central to establishing the plausibility of this view are the arguments employed by Donald Davidson against the dualism of conceptual scheme(s) and empirical content--a distinction upon which both the foundationalism of the empiricist tradition, and conceptual relativism, rely.</p>