Markus Seidel

In a paper published in this journal Martin Hinton aims to show that the struggle between Moti Mizrahi and me about whether arguments from expert opinion are weak arguments rests on misunderstandings (Hinton 2015). Let me emphasize that I generally appreciate Hinton’s intention to settle the dispute between Mizrahi and myself in this way. 1 Furthermore, I also agree with Hinton’s conclusion that if Mizrahi is interpreted in the way Hinton does, then Mizrahi’s “claim becomes far less controversial, but also rather uninteresting” (Hinton 2015, 551)—to refer to the title of my former paper: just spilling out the water wouldn’t be worth a paper in Informal Logic. 2 Let me therefore focus in this reply on the points where Hinton directly attacks my treatment of Mizrahi and also what Hinton takes to be my account of expertise. I will discuss the following criticism of Hinton: (1) that, at points, my attack on Mizrahi is unfair due to my misunderstanding of his intentions, (2) that the notion of expertise I use is self-contradictory/inconsistent, (3) that the argument for my view is circular, (4) that one of my examples—the example from soccer—is mistaken. In rebutting this criticism, I aim to clarify the background of my former paper in this journal.

This paper discusses Sosa’s via media between existential relativism and absolutism. We discuss three implications of Sosa’s account which require some further clarification. First, we distinguish three alternative readings of Sosa’s account – the indexicalist, the homonymist and the (proper) relativist reading – and argue that they differ with respect to two crucial points: (a) they lead to different analyses of the lack of disagreement in existential discourse, and (b) they differ with respect to the question of whether conceptual schemes pick out different senses of “exist” or whether they pick out different entities to exist. Second, we ask Sosa to answer on four problematic implications of his final position: (a) Sosa appears to change the topic from ontology to semantics without solving the ontological issue. (b) It is puzzling why Sosa finally accepts the initially implausible explosion of reality. (c) Sosa is forced to accept that disputants really disagree in existential disputes (although faultlessly). (d) We offer an even simpler alternative option to reconcile the realist and the relativist intuitions by clarifying what is meant by “conceptual relativism”, without arguing for existential relativity at all. Third, we argue that Sosa’s argumentative reliance on an appropriate development of conceptual schemes drives him not only to a position of pure conceptual absolutism, but even to a more traditional form of ontological absolutism according to which nature itself manages to cut the cookies. In contrast to his apparent intention, this discharges Sosa’s via media from any relativist intuition.

In this paper I argue that a moderate form of epistemic relativism that is inspired by the work of Thomas Kuhn fails. First of all, it is shown that there is evidence to the effect that Kuhn already in his 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions' proposes moderate relativism. Second, it is argued that moderate relativism is confronted with a severe dilemma that follows from Kuhn’s own argument for his relativistic conclusion. By focusing on the work of moderate relativists like Bernd Schofer and Gerald Doppelt this dilemma as well as the ultimate failure of Kuhn’s moderate relativism are exhibited.