Scepticism, relativism, and the structure of epistemic frameworks

• The role of the problem of the criterion in the principal argument for epistemic relativism is explained.
• Methodist and particularist responses to the principal argument for epistemic relativism are criticized.
• A new strategy for resisting epistemic relativism that targets the doctrine of epistemic pluralism is outlined.
• A new way of understanding the structure of epistemic frameworks is proposed.

This paper has four aims: first, to outline the role of the sceptical problem of the criterion in the principal argument for epistemic relativism; second, to establish that methodist and particularist responses to the problem of the criterion do not, by themselves, constitute successful strategies for resisting epistemic relativism; third, to argue that a more fruitful strategy is to attempt to evaluate epistemic frameworks on the basis of the epistemic resources that they have in common; and finally, to make the case that finding this common ground will necessarily involve determining how it is that a framework’s constituent epistemic methods depend on one another for not only their warrant, but for their application.