Bärnthaler 2017
PAUL BOGHOSSIAN Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism Paul Boghossian, Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism, Oxford University Press, 2006, 152pp., $24.95 (hbk), ISBN 019928718X. Reviewed by Richard Bärnthaler, University of Vienna Chapter 1, Introduction, elaborates on the main claim that Boghossian seeks to refute as the book progresses: the doctrine of equal validity, which states, "There are many radically different, yet 'equally valid' ways of knowing the world" (p.2). In doing so, Boghossian explains the ideological (i.e. post-colonial) and intellectual (e.g. feminist epistemology) origins of what he terms a social dependence conception of knowledge. In Chapter 2, The Social Construction of Knowledge, Boghossian defines what it means for our beliefs to count as knowledge; he states that a thinker S knows p iff: 1. S believes p 2. S is justified in believing p 3. p is true Subsequently, Boghossian identifies three positions of the constructivist about knowledge: constructivism about facts (Chapter 3 and 4), constructivism about justification (Chapter 5, 6, and 7), and constructivism about rational explanation (Chapter 8). He stresses that the 'equal validity claim' might seem plausible "to anyone who finds even one of these constructivist theses true" (p.23). In Chapter 3, Constructing the Facts, Boghossian argues that, in the picture of fact constructivism, "our concepts work like cookie cutters: they carve the world up into facts by drawing boundaries" (p.34); the reasons for drawing are always pragmatic. Boghossian, however, argues that even in terms of this picture there must be some description-independent facts to even make sense. Additionally, he identifies three problems that should lead the reader to refute fact constructivism: the problem of causation (i.e. some objects' existence antedates ours), the problem of conceptual competence (i.e. some concepts have the very purpose of designating things independent of us), and the problem of disagreement (i.e. a violation of non-contradiction). In Chapter 4, Relativizing the Facts, Boghossian discusses Rorty's claim that, even if objects exist independently of us, one can never claim certain propositions to be simply true, but only that they are true relative to our preferred way of talking. Subsequently, Boghossian focuses on the domain of morality to construe a moral relativistic position: 1) Moral non-absolutism: There are no absolute moral facts which can confirm absolute moral judgments 2) Moral relationsim: If S's moral judgments are to have any prospect of being true, we must not construe his utterance of the form "It is wrong of P to A" as expressing the claim It is wrong of P to A, but rather as expressing the claim: According to moral framework M, that I, S, accept, it is wrong of P to A. 3) Moral pluralism: There are many alternative moral frameworks, but no facts by virtue of which one of them is more correct than any of the others. 1