Relativism and sociology of knowledge according to rationalist authors
The course of academic life, some rationalist authors have been in charge of criticizing relativism as something pernicious, these authors describe relativism as a threat to rational and scientific standards. However, relativism is complete.
In this text, we are going to take as thesis the sociological statement in which the possibility of knowing from a kind of social construct that arises in response to specific needs, which from a relativistic perspective does not have a claim to be universal orUnique, but, on the other hand, it is open to the reciprocal possibility of complement, which has a basis in previous knowledge that can make knowledge a form of development, where everyday problems are in a solution posture that contains variousvariables to be faced.
Thus, based on the budget on which there are multiple forms of relativism we will focus only on the proposal made by the author where we will base on: “a) the observation that beliefs on a certain subject vary, and b) the conviction thatWhich of these beliefs is in a given context is something that depends on, or is relative to the circumstances of the users ”(Barnes and Bloor. P. 28) However, relativism has a postulate referring to equivalences, that is, if we have a series of theories for further away that are from each other in a great range of time, all would be exposed to judgments of verifiability or falsification in the same way, its epistemic content would not be more important, but its relativistic postulate of what can be known and what a method to use to get to know that something or object of study. However, this equivalence position would bring a serious difficulties in stating that all knowledge can be considered equal to true or false, which would lead us to an absolute relativistic state in which we cannot fall. In this way, the equivalence that is raised in the text is the vision in which the beliefs that are evaluated are for credibility.
For its part, the sociological field sees knowledge and the possibility of validating its veracity from a completely social perspective, however, this brings a new problem, since according to relativism it would be impossible to consider criteria that are purely universal, an affirmationI found knowledge by social environment, it would seem pernicious either because they are based on populations with specific needs or by beliefs that could not be equal for different people from different places and at this point it is where the epistemological conception of knowledge enters giving opening to whichwhat we intend to know ideologically of an approach to science. Thus it begins to show that although knowledge and ideologies are immersed in a vast social context, all empirical research beliefs must be problematized so that the causes of local places or causes can be reached so that according to their contextgive credibility from its historical, practical and social perspective.
If we start from a perspective in which knowledge is part of the environments in which man intends to develop, being affected by the action of the world that would completely affect the individual, who has cognitive and brain abilities to pretend to explain how he developsScientific acts in its immediate environment, which makes the very nature of science its object of assimilation and does the legitimator of knowledge. However, for man to make this approach to his immediate environment he needs his cognitive faculties to be accompanied by objects that facilitate his experimentation of what is in research fabric, and from his culture he takes patterns of social assimilation.
Bibliography
- Barnes, b. and Bloor, D. (s.F.). Relativism, rationalism and philosophy of knowledge.
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