name=bookmark655>Cognitive relativism
The problem of cognitive relativism would not be solved even once the Azande had writing and all that it entails. Indeed, it would become more acute.
For suppose they had come to develop a view that was abstract, general, and systematic in exactly the ways that formal philosophy is. We could still ask whether they would have any reason to end up agreeing with us. The Chinese did, after all, develop writing before any contact with the West, and their theories were abstract, general, systematic, and quite different from ours.Suppose, then, that history had been different and the Azande had invented writing for themselves. Suppose, too, that they had started the process of systematic critical theorizing on their own. And suppose they had come to develop a theory, based still on belief in mangu but modified, as a result of their accumulated experimental experience, to deal with the cases where the old theory seemed to have failed. We began our consideration of the Azande in order to address the question of whether cognitive relativism was true. So we must now ask ourselves whether, even if the Azande had developed in this way, we have good reason to believe that we could still persuade them that they were wrong.
Some philosophers (and many anthropologists) have argued recently that we have no reason to believe that we could. In other words, they have defended versions of cognitive relativism. And their reasons for defending this view have to do with very general considerations about the nature of our theories of the world.
Begin with the fact that the concepts we use to organize our sensory and perceptual experience are themselves theory-laden. Terms such as “gene,” as we saw in Chapter 4, get their meaning from their place in a complex network of beliefs—a theory.
Recent cognitive relativists have started with this fact and gone on to argue that because our terms gain their meaning from such networks of beliefs, we can ask only whether a claim is true relative to some such network. These networks of beliefs that define our concepts are usually called “conceptual frameworks” or “conceptual schemes.”If you agree that our concepts gain their meaning from such conceptual schemes, you might argue as follows. The Azande have one conceptual scheme, we have another. As they develop their ideas, to eradicate some of the inconsistencies between their theories and their observations, their theories will become better by the standards set within their conceptual scheme. The same is true of us. But if meaning, and thus truth, applies only with respect to a conceptual scheme, there is no point in saying that their theories are false by our standards.
Some of their theories may be false by their standards, and they might discover this by experimentation. But they are no more under an obligation to test their theories by our standards than we are obliged to test our theories by theirs. Since this is so, we have no reason to believe that they must come to accept our theories in the long run, just as they have no reason to expect that we shall end up believing theirs.
There may seem, at first glance, to be little to worry about in the possibility of cognitive relativism. But I think a little reflection suggests that we should not be complacent about this possibility. Suppose the cognitive relativists are correct. Then reasonable people, on the basis of reasonable interpretations of their experience, can come to have different and apparently incompatible theories of the world, and there may be no evidence or argument that can show which of them is right. What is true relative to one scheme may be false relative to another.
Before we go on to discuss this view, it is important to notice that I have moved between a weaker and a stronger version of cognitive relativism in the last few paragraphs.
The strong version holds that what is true is relative to a conceptual scheme and that what is true for one may be false for another; the weak version, that what it is reasonable to believe is relative to a conceptual scheme, and that what it is reasonable to believe in one conceptual scheme it may not be reasonable to believe in another. Weak relativism follows logically from strong relativism but not vice versa.I think that there is a simple and powerful argument against strong relativism that draws on Frege's insights about meaning. If the argument is right, then, since strong relativism is not a logical consequence of weak relativism, weak cognitive relativism might still be correct. But I want to begin by putting strong relativism behind us.
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