Knowledge is the product of material conditions

The argument

Relativism considers knowledge as relative to the environment in which people produce it. Social, cultural, and political factors influence the questions we ask and the answers we can obtain. Things have the property they have (big, small, beautiful, right, wrong…) because they are relative to other things, especially relative to people’s experience of life. Life experience is diverse and different because people come from different backgrounds and have different beliefs. There cannot be false arguments or one true argument. It is impossible to gain objective, purely true information, and therefore, knowledge is impossible.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Despite the various cultural beliefs and diverse social environments people live in, there are some universal things to all social systems. An example would be the seven universal facial expressions: happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, contempt and surprise. If every argument is true and faultless, disagreements defy the purpose of having arguments. Disagreement means that one side finds the other incorrect or is offering a less likely explanation of the phenomenon discussed. People disagree because some knowledge or arguments are more accurate or correct than others. Such disagreements are valid, which shows that evidence and knowledge are not impossible.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] That the questions people ask are shaped by their circumstances does not entail that the answers are. The origin of an inquiry and the truth of its conclusion are separate matters, and a claim reached for parochial reasons can still be checked against evidence that observers from any background can inspect. [Rejecting P2] The claim that there is no single true argument is self-undermining, since it is itself offered as a true argument that the opposing view is mistaken. If it holds only relatively, it gives no reason to abandon the view that knowledge is possible; if it holds absolutely, relativism is false by its own example. The counter makes the same point from practice: disagreement only has a purpose if some accounts are more accurate than others. [Rejecting P3] The step from "properties are relative" to "objective information cannot be obtained" conflates two things. Relational facts — that one object is larger than another, or that a practice is disapproved of in a given society — are perfectly objective facts about a relation. Relativity of a property to a frame of reference is a feature of many well-established sciences rather than a barrier to knowledge.