Articulating a Consultative Epistemology: Toward a Reconciliation of Truth and Relativism

Abstract

The field of epistemology has been characterized by a perennial tension between two broadly contrasting approaches to knowledge—one associated with the search for foundational truth, the other associated with assertions regarding the relativity of truth. This paper resolves this tension within the framework of a consultative epistemology. This epistemological framework demonstrates and explores the relativity of the social construction of truth, and in so doing, resolves the paradoxical truth claim, associated with relativist approaches to knowledge, that there are no universally valid truths. The ultimate purpose of the paper is to articulate an epistemology that supports the development of more integrative approaches to knowledge.