Relativism about Reasons |
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Authors: | Nick Tosh |
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Institution: | (1) Trinity College, Cambridge, CB2 1TQ, UK |
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Abstract: | Historians must be sensitive to the alienness of the past. Insofar as they are concerned with their actors’ reasoning, they
must (through open-minded empirical investigation) find out how their actors thought, and not assume that they thought like us. This is familiar historiographical advice, but pushed
too far it can be brought to conflict with rather weak assumptions about what historians must presuppose if they are to interpret
their actors at all. The present paper sketches those assumptions, and argues that the influential ‘Strong Program’ in the
Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK) falls foul of them. We do not argue from the correctness of the assumptions to the
falsity of SSK. Rather, we note the incompatibility, and then show how SSK theorists’ tendency to take interpretation for granted blinds them—and perhaps their readers—to the existence of the conflict.
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Keywords: | Relativism Interpretation Historiography Sociology of Scientific Knowledge Strong Program |
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