Empiriškai pagrįstų žinių atribojimo svarba

ENModern relativists or levellers (to borrow Alan Chalmers’ catchphrase) try to deny the special epistemic status of empirical knowledge, so as a result one finds empirical science, local beliefs, pseudoscientific speculations and superstition on the same epistemological footing. In this article, I argue that this is an erroneous position that neglects differences of fundamental importance in the knowledge-seeking enterprise, namely, that there are plenty of extremely well justified empirical regularities. The relativistic global critique obscures the fact that metascientific reflection is done in the context of empirically justified knowledge with no means to question the validity of empirical regularities. Moreover, the relativistic critique encourages epistemic nihilism which, contrary to the expectations of relativists, leads to intelectual provincialism and is harmful to critical thinking.