Defusing epistemic relativism

This paper explores the question of whether there is an interesting form of specifically epistemic relativism available, a position which can lend support to claims of a broadly relativistic nature but which is not committed to relativism about truth. It is argued that the most plausible rendering of such a view turns out not to be the radical thesis that it is often represented as being. 0. One of the key motivations for relativism is the idea that two parties to a dispute could each be equally in the right. So, for example, you claimon the basis of your religious worldview and the framework of beliefs that this involvesthat it is a historical fact that Moses parted the Red Sea, while I claimon the basis of my secular worldview and the framework of beliefs that this involvesthat no such thing ever happened and yet, the relativistic thought goes, both of us could be right. Opting for truth relativism is one way of accommodating this faultless disagreement motivation for relativism, such that what each party to the dispute says could be true. That is, relative to your religious framework, what you claim about Moses could be true while, relative to my secular framework, what I (counter-) claim could also be (simultaneously) true. One problem with truth relativism, aside from the fact that the view seems to be committed to an independently implausible account of truth, is that it offends against our intuition that there is genuine conflict in the cases in question. That is, if we opt for truth relativism, then rather than getting an explanation of why this is a genuine disagreement between two parties who are, nevertheless, both right, we instead get the result that the disagreement in question wasn’t genuine after all. That is, when you say that Moses parted the Red Sea you take yourself to be speaking the truth simpliciter (i.e., not the truth relative