Is knowledge relative?

Abstract

There is a widespread belief that knowledge is something relative or even subjective and individual, and that what we know depends ultimately on the assumptions that one is willing to accept. In this paper I argue that this is not the case; at least when it comes to knowledge about facts of the world there is an objective knowledge to which we aspire and to which also science, in fact, aspires. Since the problem of knowledge is complex for a number of reasons, including the fact that the term «knowledge» itself is used with different meanings, first of all I will outline some distinctions about kinds of knowledge and also about different perspectives concerning the possibility of the kind of knowledge that will be here relevant, the propositional knowledge. Finally I will address the discussion of epistemic relativism.

Key words: knowledge, propositional knowledge, skepticism, epistemic relativism, epistemic system, dogmatism.